


Dance with the Devil in the Pale Moonlight

by Dr_Roslin



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Ben and Rey Are Fooling Themselves, But it's not going to go the way we want, Car Sex, Comfort Sex, Dom/sub Undertones, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Sex, Enthusiastic Consent, F/M, Family Drama, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Glove Kink, HEA, Han Is a Fucking Delight, I'm pretty pissed at Luke Skywalker right now okay, I've got no soul to sell, Leia and Han Need to Do Some Fixing, Love Confessions, Luke Skywalker Is a Jackass, Negotiated kink, No Pregnancy, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Only One Bed, Oral Sex, Penis In Vagina Sex, Semi-Public Sex, Serious Fixing, Sex as Deflection, Snoke Being a Dick, Snoke bugged the room, Snoke probably slipped something in Ben's drink, So Many Hotel Rooms, Strangers with benefits, They are going to make him pay, Vaginal Fingering, at least at first, but - Freeform, catching feelings, dom!rey, eventually, mild but there, slow emotional burn, this is how I deal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:34:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 37,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23233312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_Roslin/pseuds/Dr_Roslin
Summary: But what if -Ben and Rey meet in a bar. Ben is a hot-shot lawyer who tells Rey he’s a garbageman. Rey tells him she’s a kindergarten teacher when really she’s a policy advisor, his mother’s right hand.And what if -Rey and Ben both know who the other is really, know they’re pretending, but they don’t care as long as they can keep meeting in different hotel rooms as often as possible?And how long can they keep that up?
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 209
Kudos: 199
Collections: Reylo Hidden Gems, Reylo Prompt Fills (@reylo_prompts)





	1. Doing the Mambo

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prompt fill for the following:
>
>> Curious Cat Prompt: "Rey is a gentle, sweet elementary school teacher, Ben is a crass lawyer. They meet at a bar."
>> 
>> — Reylo “Enabler” Prompts 💕🏳️🌈 (@reylo_prompts) [March 14, 2020](https://twitter.com/reylo_prompts/status/1238776636704583685?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)

“So you and Poe, you getting together or what?”

Rey Johnson didn't even bother to look at Rose Tico, standing by her side, though she did smile wryly.

“Are you high?”

Poe Dameron. Seriously. Her friend must be losing it. Either that or she really was high. 

Wait, was Rose _blushing? ___

____

“Come on, it’s not that crazy. The two of you are joined at the hip. You finish each other’s sentences. The whole office is placing bets on how long it’s going to be before you start doing the mambo.”

__

This time Rey turned and stared. 

__

“The mambo? Rose, really. Besides, Poe's great, and let's face it, kinda hot, but really, no. Really no. He's not - We're not - It would be like getting together with my brother. It would be like getting together with Finn, and like, again, ewww. Trust me. Me and Poe. No.”

__

“You call him your Work Husband. He calls you the Old Ball and Chain.”

__

“That's 'cause he _is _my work husband. And he calls me that because he's a jackass. And he thinks it funny.”__

_____ _

Professionally, Poe was the ying to her yang, the fun side of her, the one who put together office get-togethers and kept up office morale and made people laugh. He called her the Old Ball and Chain since she was always on him to get back to work, to focus, to think about the bigger picture behind each project, to focus that energy towards a purpose, usually one that would advance the interests of their boss, Senator Leia Organa. 

_____ _

Well, her ex-boss now, she supposed, looking over at Leia's husband, Han Solo. She'd spent too much time dreaming up policy. She wanted to look at how the other side worked, wanted to see how it all came together. And when Han had offered her the job as VP Operations, the right hand to the President of Solo International, well, it was simply too good to resist. She would, literally, be building roads. And railways and airways and spaceships. She smiled and gave her new boss a little salute with the dainty glass of champagne in her right hand, cherishing quietly the small head nod he graced her with in return. 

_____ _

This way she could embrace new challenges, continue doing what she loved, and yet also retain the connection to Leia, who'd been her mentor all these years. She was sad to say goodbye to everyone, Rose, Poe, her best friend Finn Riley, the office, everyone, but...  
Damn, it was going to be fun. 

_____ _

Plus, it would involve a lot less of these cocktail events. Once in a while it was fun to dress up and eat on someone else's dime, but let's face it, these cocktail parties were more performative than festive. And her feet hurt. Four-inch Manolo Blahnik stilettos might do wonders for her legs, but they hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.

_____ _

“Anyway,” she said, returning to Rose, “it's not like he's going to be my work husband any longer.”

_____ _

“I know. Which is why, we kinda thought, you two might finally jump the shark, so to speak.”

_____ _

Jump the shark?

_____ _

“Rose, what kind of movies have you been watching?”

_____ _

“Do the mambo, jump the shark, declare yourselves, fuck like rabbits, do the mythical dance of the beast with two backs, fall passionately in love. Whatever you call it, are you going to get your heads out of your asses and get together finally or what? It's been three years, Rey. When are you going to stop putting your life on hold?”

_____ _

“You think that's what I'm doing?”

_____ _

“Come on,” Rose said again. “You're not seeing anyone - “

_____ _

“I'm not.” 

_____ _

_Unbidden, a memory of hands, large as life, pushing up her pencil skirt as he shoved her against the wall, haste making him rougher than she would imagine he'd normally be, while his lips, softer than she could have imagined - ___

_______ _ _ _

“You work crazy hours and you live like a monk. I know you said you were looking for a new challenge when you took the job with Han, for a change of pace, so what's stopping you from going all the way?”

_______ _ _ _

Startled, Rey concentrated, really concentrated on her friend. She was serious. She was deadly serious. What was going on here? Drawing the smaller Asian woman with her, she moved with her to the back of the room, finding a couple of seats at an empty table. 

_______ _ _ _

“Rose. What's really going on here? Why do you care about whether Poe and I are 'doing the mambo' so to speak? Not that we are, and truly, not that we ever will be. Honestly, truthfully. I'm not kidding when I say that I don't see him that way. But why do you care?” 

_______ _ _ _

“With you going, I started thinking, about what I do with my life. What I want. So I need to know. Where everyone stands.”

_______ _ _ _

“Oh. Well. Well. Um, well, as I said. Poe and I are not, together, in any way. Never have been. Never will be. Just to be clear.”

_______ _ _ _

“Just to be clear. Okay then.”

_______ _ _ _

Rey smiled as she watched her friend walk away. She wasn't sure what was happening there, but she was sure she would find out eventually. 

_______ _ _ _

Distracted, she almost missed him walking in. If it hadn't been for the way the air changed around her, she might have. Or it might have been the slight smell of musk and soap.

_______ _ _ _

Either way, she made sure to glance up only slightly as he walked by the table she was sitting at, his gait taking him only slightly closer to her than would have been expected, the very tip of his index finger barely missing grazing her shoulder in a gesture too quick for anyone else to have noticed. 

_______ _ _ _

_______ _ _ _

She hoped.

_______ _ _ _


	2. The Meet Cute

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The "Meet Cute."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "Meet Cute."

They'd 'met' in a hotel bar in D.C., not a big surprise, really. She’d escaped from the event in the hotel ballroom down the hall. He was staying overnight while the pipes in his apartment were being fixed. 

She'd pretended not to know who he was. 

He'd pretended to believe her. 

After all, how many pale, six foot three, raven-haired, 'interesting' looking men named 'Ben' could there be in D.C.? 

Not enough, she thought privately. So, she might as well enjoy the one right in front of her.

She refused to feel guilty about it, though, it was likely this ‘arrangement’ would come back to bite her in the end.

Right. She was 'involved' with a Ben. That doesn't mean the one she was fucking was the one whose mother she had been working for, whose father she would shortly be working for, or the one with which this sort of connection would more than likely lead to _complications_ down the line. 

Messing around with _that_ Ben would have been a problem. That Ben who’d ended up working as chief legal counsel to Snoke Industries Ltd. - commonly known, both in her office, and well, nationally really, as Merchants of Death Ltd. The biggest international arms manufacturer in the country, Snoke Industries was headed, not surprisingly by Christian Snoke, who, while a billionaire recluse, was also the most powerful member of the international gun lobby and generally acknowledged to be a miserly old douchebag. He also happened to be the lifelong, sworn enemy - and no, that wasn’t too strong of a word - of Leia Organa and Han Solo. 

Who also happened to be her mentors. 

And who also happened to be _that_ Ben's parents.

 _That_ Ben, who, was not only chief counsel to Snoke Industries (bad enough), but was also his chief advisor and was seen as being groomed to be Snoke’s successor. 

_(The prick can’t live forever, she’d joked to Poe a few years ago. Right? I mean, what kind of deal with the Devil did he make? He’s got to be a hundred and two, if he’s a day. It's not like whoever replaces him could be _worse_._

_Careful what you wish for.)_   
  
It was just sex, she reminded herself. Nothing more. And besides, she couldn’t know, exactly, for sure, who he was, right? If they never exchanged full names. 

Sure. 

It was true she wasn't sure if he known exactly who she was, at first, either, or that she worked for his mother, though it hadn't seemed to take that long for him to make the connection. At least, that's what she assumed the explanation was for the 'pause' they'd taken in their 'arrangement'. They'd never discussed it, though, so she assumed they weren't going to have to, and could safely continued pretending. In any case, they'd gone back to doing - whatever the hell it was they were doing. 

They hadn't been able to help themselves that night...

_'So, um, Ben,' they'd agreed on first names only, 'what exactly is it that you do?'_

_'Garbage collector,' he'd told her, without the slightest flick of his eyelids. 'You, Rey, what is it that do you do?'_

_She laughed, enjoying the game, enjoying that he wasn't trying to impress her, at least not in the usual D.C. way, boasting about escalating job titles. He was wearing an extremely expensive, custom-made, jet-black suit clearly tailored by Savile Row. The cut was too slick for it to be American-made. The slim lines only emphasized his height and the long length of his legs._

_'Kindergarten teacher.'_

_He smiled back at her. Her cocktail dress showed off more leg than fabric, and the V of the neckline showed off the extremely fine collarbones she was excessively proud of. Not that kindergarten teachers couldn't be sexy..._

_‘Join me for a drink? I’ll tell you all about the latest advancements in sanitation.’_

_‘Love to. Though I should warn you, I probably know even more about bodily disasters than you do. Really,’ she’d said, unable to stop laughing, ‘ I deal with 25 6 year-olds, remember? Daily.’_

_‘Right. I forgot. Kindergarten teacher. Not policy advisor?’ He’d asked, apparently wanting to see how far she wanted to take this._

_‘God, no. Kindergarten teacher.’_

_‘Right.’_

_‘And you’re _not_ a corporate lawyer.’_

_The side of his mouth lifted, barely, taking her breath away._

_‘Nope.’_

They’d made it through the better part of a bottle of red before they’d started joking about nightcaps in his hotel room. 

They'd made it all the way through the bottle before it wasn’t a joke anymore. 

They managed to leave the bar separately, if only by five minutes, but that’s as far as her sanity took her. She couldn’t have remembered anything about the room if she’d tried. She only remembered the way he tasted as she banged him against the inside wall. 

Leaving his room immediately afterwards, she’d told herself she was never doing that again. 

Even before he texted her while she was in the cab heading home, she knew she was lying.

Still. 

She’d told Rose the truth. She wasn’t seeing anyone. 

It was in no way relevant that she was pretending not to know that the man she was casually fucking was Ben Solo. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say 'hi' on twitter at @RandomBks


	3. Here There Be Dragons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben's P.O.V. Because that's always fun.

He’d meant to end it months ago. 

He really had. They’d been meeting in random hotel rooms two, three times a week by now, and it really had to stop. As casual as this ‘connection’ was, as careful as they’d both been to avoid placing any expectations on the other, the fact was that it was a distraction. From his work. From his purpose. Snoke had even asked him, ‘casually’ if there was a reason he kept finding fault with the apartment the company provided, he’d spent so little time in it. 

So, yes, he’d meant to end it. 

He'd do it tomorrow.

 _Tomorrow_ , he’d told himself, _tomorrow, he'd quit texting her, quit finding excuses to seek her out._

Tomorrow. Right. 

The other night they hadn’t made it out of his car. He’d been so hungry for her, he’d fucked her without getting out, with the driver’s seat pushed all the way back and the windows steaming in a parking garage where he’d parked because he knew the lights were broken and the security cameras were dodgy. It’d been incredibly dangerous and incredibly stupid, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself. Even the knowledge that they were moments away from getting caught, that this was going to end _badly_ , even that hadn’t been able to stop him from giving into the desperation to sink into her the moment she’d gotten into the car and the smell of her soap wrapped around him. 

He’d been in such a rush he’d forgotten to take his driving gloves off. When they’d finally made it to the hotel, where he’d already has a room booked, _which had been right upstairs_ , she’d asked him to put the gloves back on as they fucked each other again on the hotel room floor. She'd said the feel of the leather against her skin made her come over and over again.

Fuck. He was getting hard right now, just thinking about it.

He’d end it. He would. He really would. 

Tomorrow.

Not tonight, though. He’d known he’d see her here, or that at the very least it was likely. It was perfect, he'd thought. They were both here, and it was a hotel. It had rooms. He’d already texted her the suite number and a time.

Meanwhile, he had bigger problems.

‘Mother.’

He moved in awkwardly to give his formidable mother a peck on a cheek, knowing she’d demand it. Though more than a foot shorter at 5 ft 1, his mother dominated whatever space she occupied. 

Senator Leia Organa had always a been a force to reckon with, and her fine patrician features (which, he was well aware, he'd failed to inherit, as he took after his father) only reinforced the sense of her intelligence, forcefulness and grace. So did the assessing look in her eye. 

‘Father.’

He shook his father’s hand, mentally counting down the time he’d have to spend in this duty call before he could safely retreat. Knowing they’d all be here tonight, he’d prepared mentally, but even that was unlikely to be enough, though God knows he was sure they’d all be on their best behaviour. 

_Say hello to your mother and father for me_ , Snoke had told him earlier, but even Ben Solo had no intentions of starting a fight with his parents in the midst of a crowded ballroom at a charity event they were sponsoring. 

He also had no intention of giving either of his parents the warm bear hugs they’d clearly been ready to greet him with. 

‘Son.’

Han’s eyes may have developed the puppy dog expression his son had once been so susceptible to, that mix of disappointment and pain, but Ben had no intention of falling into that trap once again. They could all be civil, but really they had no reason to expect any more from him. He tried to ignore the fact that his father looked tireder than he had the last time they'd done this dance, that the scruffy grey hair had gone more white, that there were more pronounced lines in the older man's face. Still handsome in his early seventies, Han Solo nevertheless looked more worn than he'd been last time.

‘I hope you’re both well.’

‘And you. It’s too bad, we were hoping we could introduce you to Rey tonight, but I don’t see her, she must have left earlier.’

He froze. That would have been awkward, and, more than that, it would have meant the end to this delicious game they were playing, both pretending not to know exactly who the other was. He was well aware that his ‘friend’ Rey was really Rey Johnson, his mother’s right hand and chief policy advisor. He was pretty sure she was equally aware that she was sleeping with her boss’ only son. They’d just mutually agreed that the other person in this ‘arrangement’ was deaf as well as blind. It worked for them. Meeting formally now would ruin everything. 

Tomorrow.

He’d end it tomorrow. 

Reluctantly he switched his focus back to the other woman in his life, continuing to chat politely with her on a number of impersonal topics while his father glowered in the background. He always enjoyed talking to his mother, though he tried not to; his mother had always been a delightful conversationalist, witty, knowledgeable and with a wicked and slightly dry humour. As long as they stayed away from personal topics, they would be fine, though he wasn’t sure how long his father could keep his feelings at bay. 

Ben could almost see him itching to attack the elephant in the room, though Han did his best to carefully skirt around the tension and make his proper contribution to the conversation at hand. It was difficult for him, though, he was less practised at it than Leia, and less willing to try. His mother was better at the game, better at controlling her emotions through a veil of correct civility. He only wish she hadn’t played it so well when he’d been younger. Maybe he would have seen her more.

No. That was unfair. It was just - 

‘Your father and I are going to take a short vacation in Sonoma, recharge our batteries a bit. Drink wine and walk in the sun and not think of anything in particular.’

He wasn’t surprised. It looked like his father could use a break, and even after forty years of marriage they had always enjoyed each others company. Come to think of it, they'd always been so wrapped up in each other, he’d wondered how they’d managed to remember they had a child, sometimes. 

No, he admitted honestly to himself, that had never been the case. 

Wrapped up in each other they had always been, even if their marriage had never been the smoothest or the most serene. Both extremely busy and demanding people, they’d sometimes found it difficult to live together, but they’d made it work, and he was certain, partially he was sure, for his behalf.

But they'd always been there for him. This estrangement was a result of adult issues, not childhood ones. His parents had been extremely attentive, and perhaps too eager to see all that was wonderful and unique about their only child, always looking forward to hearing about his day, his struggles, his thoughts and friends and dreams. 

It was only when he’d gotten older and started finding his own path that the trouble had begun.

Well, that, and the incident with Luke.

Frowning, he almost missed the slight motherly needling Leia got in next. 

‘Vacations. You might consider one.’

‘I’d love to Mother, but I’m afraid work keeps me chained to my desk most days.’

‘Indeed.’

Work. For Snoke. Which thankfully no one mentioned.

His father cleared his throat, clearly thinking of jumping in, before his wife cut in smoothly. 

‘We’ll be back in two weeks. We were thinking it might be nice to have dinner then. A family dinner.’

‘Umm.’ 

He swallowed nervously. He always got nervous when she got so direct. It was unlike her, which was one reason it was so effective. Sometimes he forgot how good she was at this. 

Meanwhile, his father’s deep, soft voice cut in.

‘Think about it, kid. We’d like you to spend some time with us, just the three of us, as we used to. No pressure, no obligations, we won’t ask you to do anything you don’t want to.

It’s just, we miss you.’

He had to get out of there. _Now._

Making the proper noncommittal noises, he made his excuses and tried not to run out of the ballroom, resisting with everything he had the urge to look back at his parents. 

_Keep moving forward. Don’t look back. Forget the past. Kill it if you have to._

Wait, was that him or Snoke talking? Sometimes he couldn’t tell anymore.

As he reached the hallway he looked down at his phone as it beeped in his hand with an incoming text. 

_Are you upstairs? I can meet you anytime._

Rey. 

He ignored the bank of elevators and turned into the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time. The key fob for the room was burning a hole in the inside pocket of his suit jacket as he texted her back.

Tomorrow. He’d end it tomorrow. 

Sure.

_Ready now._


	4. Only One Bed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of COURSE there's only one bed - they planned it that way. But I couldn't help the reference to one of my favourite tropes. I also thought of naming this chapter 'Complications Ensue'. Because, realistically, how long did they think they could really get away with pretending they were that stupid? One brain cell, I know, but still...

His voice came out of the darkness as she reached for the hotel-provided robe on her way to the bathroom. 

‘You should stay tonight.’

Startled, she turned to look at him, half-buried under the hotel comforter, his black hair on the white pillowcase the only colour in the room. 

‘Excuse me?’

‘It’s late, and the ice storm moved in while we were here. You’ll never get a cab, and I’m not sure the roads would be safe anyway.

You should stay here tonight.

If you want.’

Well, that was new. These past months they’d developed a system, getting together two or three times a week, taking turns booking the hotel rooms, sometimes talking, sometimes not, sometimes spending hours together in conversation or sex, sometimes moving on after an hour. 

Though, to be honest, lately they'd been spending more time together than not, spending as many hours talking as they did fucking. And there had been a lot of fucking.

She frowned quietly.

_That pattern really hadn’t been part of the plan, why had she just noticed that now?_

She pushed the thought away, she’d worry about that later.

Looking back at him, feeling his touch on her skin... the roads were likely to be bad. Would it really be so bad to spend the night and leave early in the morning? 

Did he sense her hesitation?

‘It’s Friday. You don’t have to go in tomorrow. You can wait, go home in the morning, once the road conditions improve.’

True. And to be honest, she wasn’t looking forward to leaving this warm hotel room for the cold February night. Make a decision, Johnson...

‘Alright. Thank you.’

Taking a deep breath, she hurried into the bathroom and turned on the shower, suddenly nervous. Brushing her teeth with the hotel-provided toothbrush, she thought about their current situation as she waited for the water to heat.

This was not their normal routine. Though, she thought as she gingerly hopped under the warm spray of the shower, she wasn’t sure that had been their normal sex either. It had been fantastic - she blushed, remembering how hard she’d screamed - but also incredibly intense.

He’d made her come over and over and over, teasing her and playing with her, denying her the climax, taking her to the edge and then backing off, his eyes intense, his only words the ones he'd use to tell her all the filthy ways he intended to get her off, even as his fingers dug into her skin and his mouth bruised her body. Then he’d had her watch as he put on his driving gloves.

The feel of the gloves on her skin as he'd driven into her - she was sure she was going to be haunted by that sensation until the moment she died. 

She blushed, even in the hot shower. Who knew her fetish had been leather all this time?

Still, staying the night.

This was new, and bad road conditions or not, this was an escalation of their previous arrangement. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She’d gotten a handle on their _thing_ , whatever it was. He texted her or she texted him, they’d mutually fallen into a rhythm of taking turns booking their hotel rooms, making sure never to book the same place twice (she didn't know about him, but she now had an app on her phone telling her where to book and when) and then who was ‘visiting’ left when they were through. 

She always stayed the night when they stayed in her room, luxuriating in the sense of being out of her regular life before heading to work the next morning. She wasn’t sure he did. She always got the impression he left immediately after her when she ‘visited’ him, though of course, she’d never asked. 

This, though. Sleeping together. Actually sleeping. In his bed. Next to him. This she didn’t know how to navigate. It wasn’t as though she was expecting to cuddle or anything, but still...

_Keep it together Johnson. You’re a grown woman. You can do this._

Walking back into the room, she was relieved to see he was apparently sleeping. She got in under the sheets gingerly, careful not to come anywhere near him and hoping she wouldn’t wake him up. 

Sharing a bed. We’re just sharing a bed. Nothing to see here. Except they were both still naked and she could still smell their intermingled scents in the bedding. 

Fuck. 

Counting sheep, counting sheep. Just breathe and go to sleep. 

Though she couldn’t have believed it possible, she was asleep within moments. 

##

She wasn’t sure when she woke up, and she wasn’t sure how, but she’d ended up in his arms, spoon style, and he was nuzzling at her neck, his fingers adeptly playing with her nipples and his cock pushing up against her, already partially into her. Without thinking, she arched her back into him, giving him better access to her neck - _fuck_ she loved his tongue - encouraging him to continue.

The room was still pitch dark though the drapes were partially open, meaning it was still the middle of the night. All she could think was _more, more, more._

She’d deal with the repercussions in the morning. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm at @randombks on twitter if you feel the need to yeet at me.


	5. A Dance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They didn't do these types of questions. Did they?

This time it was the hotel phone by his side of the bed that woke her up, the dark, deep, sleep-roughened voice of her lover answering and sounding much less than confused than anyone had a right to be first thing in the morning. 

‘Thank you.’

She heard him place the receiver back in the cradle before he turned to her under the covers, gently running his hand down her back, to wake her up, she assumed.

Sleepily she looked at him. By no rights should anyone look that delicious first thing in the morning either. 

Although, given the fact that neither of them had to work today ... and given the fact that she could feel his morning erection pressing into her...

She could definitely take advantage of that. Shifting to look up at him, she let her hand trail down his chest where he was waiting, already hard for her. 

'What time is it?'

'8 o'clock. I'm sorry, I forgot, I ordered breakfast for us last night when you were in the shower. That was the front desk, telling me that room service will be here in five minutes.’

She fought back the panic. 

‘Room service? Someone will be here in five minutes?’

She’d no idea why the idea of someone seeing her in Ben’s bed filled her with panic, and did her best to hide it. 

She failed.

‘Okay, um, let me just go - ’

_— hide in the bathroom._

Was that a smirk she saw? She hit him with the pillow as she hastily got out of bed, throwing the robe back on. She swore she heard the knock at the door as she hurriedly threw the covers back in position and hastily gathered up her clothes and her shoes in preparation for running into the washroom. She didn’t know who she was fooling, her winter coat was draped over the chair by the entrance and he’d obviously ordered room service for two, but...

Meanwhile, she watched out of the corner of her eye as he threw back the covers and casually wandered buck naked over to what was probably an overnight bag. Even as he squatted to dig through it, she heard the knock on the door, for real this time.

‘One minute,’ she heard Ben’s deep voice respond as she beat a hasty retreat into the bathroom, wistfully thinking she could have enjoyed the show another minute or two. 

She gave him plenty of time to deal with room service, and though she thought of putting her clothes from the night before back on, she decided to be daring and wear the robe again, though she did wash her face, feeling much more composed.

He was already seated when she came out, pouring the second cup of coffee for her, and for the first time in her adult life, she did not immediately reach for the cup of life, distracted as she was by the fact that he was dressed more casually than she’d ever imagined she’d see him. The loose, fine material of the sweatpants clung to the edge of his hips, outlining _everything_ , and contrasted nicely with an old Black Sabbath t-shirt, too loose to be fashionable and too faded to be new. 

She swallowed. 

‘Coffee. I need coffee.’

She moved towards the small table he was already seated at, his long legs stretched out and his powerful upper body dwarfing it, to see the biggest breakfast she’d seen in a long while set out before him.

He looked almost sheepish. 

‘I need a lot of food to keep me going.’

_I bet you do_. 

She smiled back at him. 

‘So do I.’

Seating herself, she reached first for the coffee, noting he was already half a cup in. No wonder his brain was working better than hers at the moment. 

Still, the interruption was almost a shame, given...

The smell of the food he'd ordered hit her then, snapping her out of her fantasy of having him have her for breakfast instead.

_Bacon._

Food first. Then sex. 

She laughed at herself quietly. She was a simple woman after all. Her needs were finite.

'That omelette looks amazing,' she told him twenty minutes later, and was delighted as he fed her a bite.

'More coffee?'

'Please.'

They ate together in companionable silence, and she was pleased to see that he was able to keep up with her as they ate. There weren't many men who were as into their food as she was, and she was pleased that Ben apparently was as open as she was in consuming the massive amount of food it apparently took to keep him going.

Finally full (yesterday had been a long day, after all), she settled down with her third coffee, enjoying watching him eat. If there was one thing she loved, it was watching a man with a healthy appetite eat. 

'Full?'

'Yes, thank you. That was delicious.'

He grunted, reaching again for his coffee cup. Noting it was almost empty, she filled it up again from the pot and watched him enjoy. 

He settled back in his chair finally, mirroring her stance in her chair, cradling his coffee cup, his massive hands making the solid cup the hotel provided look like a delicate piece of china.

'You haven't checked your phone.'

Surprised by the non-sequitur, she looked at him. 

'I'm on vacation. For the next week.'

'March break?'

She smiled. 

'Ah, yes, the kids are off for a week in March. But no, actually, I'm changing jobs, and I'm taking a week off before I start. Plus, my new employer is off to Sonoma for a couple of weeks, so I'm taking it easy before he gets back.’

'You're changing jobs?'

For an instant, it seemed like the air was charged with electricity, and it seemed almost threatening, though she'd never been scared around him. 

Confused, she tilted her head, looking at him.

_They didn't do these types of questions. Did they?_

'Yes.'

She left it at that, waiting to see how far he was willing to push it, wondering if he was looking to change or end the nature of their arrangement. She didn't have to wait long.

'So, what are you planning to do now, Rey?'

She smiled, pleased. She was so excited about her new role, she could barely contain it. 

'I'm going to build roads.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come see me, I'm at [@randombks](https://twitter.com/RandomBks)


	6. Off Rhythm

It felt like there was ice freezing his very soul. She couldn't mean... that's not what she meant, right?

She wasn't going where he - she couldn't possible mean...

'Roads?'

She smiled wide, and he was struck again by how beautiful she was. Though she was tall, 5 foot 7 if she was an inch, she still barely reached his chin, petite in frame and lovely in feature. He could never resist staring at her lovely hazel eyes. Meanwhile, every time he looked at her long chestnut hair he had difficulty imaging anything other than the way it felt as it caressed his body as she had kissed and nibbled every inch of him. She'd always been so generous with her tongue. 

He struggled to concentrate on what she was saying. He couldn't imagine that she'd meant what he thought she meant. Surely, she didn't...

Meanwhile, she was still talking about her new job, though he struggled to pay attention.

' - and the aerospace industry is growing as we speak, such opportunities - '

He broke in, his voice harsher than he meant as he struggled to control it.

'Solo International.'

She seemed startled. 

'Yes. Ben - I thought we weren't...'

'I think we're beyond that, Rey.'

Why couldn't he keep his mouth shut? Suddenly, he found that he couldn't.

Anymore.

It seemed like tomorrow was today, after all. 

He fought the ice that seemed to freeze him.

Just because it was time, didn't mean he had to enjoy it. 

'Rey. Rey Johnson.'

And just like that, the spell was broken. 

Did she look stricken? Or was that just him?

Well, it had been fun while it lasted. Not having someone looking at him like he was a monster every moment of ever day. Having someone instead being willing to enjoy him, enjoy his company, asking nothing in return other than his conversation and his companionship. 

'Ben Solo.'

Ben Solo. The name hung in the air. Still, given what he suspected, he had little choice?

This couldn't continue if...

'You're not working for my father.' 

******

Fuck. 

'I am. Working for your father. Or will be, after my vacation next week.'

She could literally feel the air freeze around them. Confused, she looked at him. 

'I've been working for your mother for the past three years. And you never had a problem with that. I mean, you never had a problem with it while you were pretending not to know I was working for your mother, but... still.'

'Working for my mother is one thing. My father - is quite another.'

Really, had she fallen into another dimension? It was the only thing that could explain her confusion. She knew he had problem with his parents. She never imagined this. 

'Ben.'

The rage that emanated out of his eyes... how had she not seen he was capable of that? What had happened to the sleepy, slightly confused, slightly caffeine-deprived, large, hungry man she'd spent breakfast with?

What had happened to the gentle, demanding lover of the past months?

'Then I guess we're done.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm at [@RandomBks if you want to spread some encouragement and reassure me that I'm not the only one unaccountably angry at TROS. *I'm not a sociopathic for being angry at the way Hux died, right?](https://twitter.com/RandomBks)


	7. Help Me Get Closer to God

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some plot snuck in - my sincere apologies. The angst train is leaving the station...

The next few weeks were busy, not unexpectedly so, as Rey settled in to her new role. The fact that she'd called her boss and skipped her scheduled time off and had instead gone in to get a head start while he was vacationing with Leia in Sonoma didn't help.

At least it didn't help her _professionally_.

Personally, it was probably a blessing considering you woke up in the middle of the night regularly, panting and sweating, her body seemingly not ready to let the memories of how Ben loved to slowly lick his way down her body fade. Between the vivid, pornographic dreams and the stress of transitioning into the senior role at Solo International, she was exhausted, irritable and uncertain, second-guessing her decision to make the move. Or at least, that's what she told herself when she found herself giving into road rage. Irritated. Right. Stressed. Exhausted. Not unhappy.

Why would she be unhappy?

She had everything she'd always wanted. The fact that the thing that was barely a thing with Ben had ended was meaningless. They'd both known it had a built-in expiration date anyway, right?

She was surprised, though, how empty she was without the random text messages she'd been used to getting several times a day. Song lyrics, food recommendations, snatches of thought. When had they gotten into the habit of sending each other these insights to their lives? And why did she miss it so much now it was gone.

The sexting, she wasn't surprised she missed, the hotel invites, the sex itself, no she wasn't surprised she missed that - when they'd come together, it had been, well, explosive, for lack of another word. He'd always been an attentive, generous lover, somehow able to read how she wanted it - up against the wall, rough and quick, or in the bed, slow and gentle and thorough, or both or sometimes just down and dirty against the sturdy hotel desk. She'd never had such amazing sex in her life, especially over a prolonged, regular basis with such an attentive, attractive lover who happened to be built like a refrigerator and knew how to use his massive hands. Any woman would miss that.

The daily contact, though, the little virtual touches... She shouldn't miss that, right? There was no room in her life for that, and certainly no room for the Ben Solo who hadn't been able to look at her the moment she'd confirmed she was going to work for his father. She'd never gotten dressed and out of a room that quickly in her life, tasting all the while the brutal bile rising in her throat, the sizeable breakfast they'd shared only moments before threatening to come up on her. She'd barely made it down the elevator and into the restroom off of the hotel lobby before she'd thrown up every bite. She'd never be able to eat spinach eggs Benedict again in her life. 

She was grateful, for everything Han and Leia had done for her, personally even more than professionally. She couldn't give that up, she'd always known that, known that she was unwilling to give up the tiny bit of family she'd finally found. It would never have been worth it to give it away for an uncertain connection with the black sheep of the family, the man who should be her professional nemesis.

So why did she miss his crooked smile and the way his face scrunched up when he laughed and the stupid lyrics from long-forgotten nineties songs he used to send her?

"Rey?"

"Hmm?"

She turned to look at her new assistant. Jannah was driven, hard-working and efficient, and she'd managed to make Rey feel at ease at Solo International within ten minutes, not exactly the easiest of tasks.

She was currently smirking at her boss.

"You know what you're singing right now, right? Under your breath?"

"I wasn't singing."

She never sang. She had a horrible singing voice. It was a point of pride that no on, _no one_ , would hear it, no matter how many times Poe organized karaoke nights.

"Um, yeah, you were. And, uh, I don't really mind, but I'm not sure you realized exactly what you were singing..."

Rey tried to concentrate - what was that song in her head?

_...only thing that works for me,_

_Help me get away from myself..._

**_Oh shit._ **

"I'm so sorry, Jannah!'

Definately should not be singing that song at work, under her breath or not. Especially not the chorus.

Her assistant laughed, the full, rich sound echoing through Rey's corner office, nearly empty except for the afternoon sun.

"Can I ask why Nine Inch Nails is stuck in your head?"

"How do you know that song? It's a little before your time."

Hell, it was a little before _her_ time.

"My older brother had a thing for nineties music. He always used to blare that song to tease my mom. She hated it."

Understandable, it was a song easily misunderstood. Rey would never have expected it to be stuck in her head, either, if it weren't for....

Fuck.


	8. A Joust

"You coming, Solo?"

Carefully and slowly, Ben swivelled in his chair to look at Armitage Hux, the VP of Operations of Snoke Limited, who was currently leaning against his doorjamb, trying too hard to look casual, as if this, this stopping by his office to pick him up for friendly drinks after work, was a regular occurrence.

Armitage Hux did not causally drop by his office to invite him for drinks after work with the rest of the management team. There were no friends at Snoke Limited, only semi-friendly rivals. With the emphasis on _rivals_. A term he and Hux defined.

"What do you want, Hux?"

"Don't be so pissy, Solo, and get your ass in gear. I could live without another few hours stuck with you too, but you're coming, like it or not."

There was only one reason Hux would be taking him for drinks on a Thursday night. On any night, for that matter. Snoke must have sent him. Ben didn't have to like it, but he knew there would be hell to pay if he blew off the other man.

Fuck. Should have stayed in New York.

"Alright. Give me a minute to shut everything down."

His boss hadn't give much choice in the matter, though. The _suggestions_ he spend more time in the D.C. office had come with increasing frequency until one day he'd received the email with the _request_ he meet with Snoke in D.C. and the man had sprung the entire set-up on him. The company condo, the moving company, the corner office down the hall from his own.

_It would be so helpful to have better access to you, dear boy. And I do enjoy your company so. This will be so much more efficient. Easier to keep you up to date with all the goings on. Easier to bounce my ideas off of you._

As if he didn't have Snoke in his head enough.

_Easier to keep my eye on you. Easier to dangle you in front of your parents._

The fact that that aspect of this arrangement had been left unsaid made it all the easier to read because of it.

He sighed quietly as he shut off his lights and followed Hux out the door. One day he'd figure out how to say no to that Snoke, but it looked like that day had yet to come.

"Where are we going?"

"There's a hotel bar around the corner. I figured it would be easiest. We're meeting Gwen there."

Gwen Phasma, too? What exactly was Hux up to that they were also dragging in the VP of Administration and HR? Or rather, what was Snoke up to? Hux didn't have imagination of a gnat. Whatever they were doing, it was Snoke's idea, not his.

As if reading his mind, his tall, red-headed colleague grimaced.

"Our Glorious Leader has decided _morale_ would be improved by closer coordination by the three of us. Professionally and socially."

Great. The last time Snoke had played this game, they'd ended at a weekend retreat where they'd played trivia obsessively and he'd made an ass of himself after his competitive streak had gotten out of hand. He'd won the entire tournament, but only after he'd lost his temper, accused Hux of cheating and had made a show of incinerating Phasma's frankly pathetic attempt at winning a round. And they'd been on his team.

In addition, he'd scared the retreat's staff so badly he'd had to apologize personally to each one of them before they would return. They'd also had to forfeit a sizable portion of the security deposit, though to be fair, that wasn't entirely Ben's fault. He hadn't been the only one who'd punched a hole in the wall. Altogether, they'd had to pay fair amount in additional charges to ensure the resort management would agree not to blacklist them from further bookings, a result his boss would have found intolerable given he'd declared it was the preeminent location for influencers in their industry.

Despite all of that, Snoke had _loved_ every minute of it, making a big deal of pointing out to the others how Ben at least had taken the game seriously, declaring him the Master of the Knights of Ren (the ridiculous name he'd given their team) and crowing over their prowess in defeating the team he'd christened the Praetorian Knights (again, only Snoke), which had been composed of the VPs of IT, Engineering and Security.

That 'tournament' had not been Ben's finest hour, and he'd no desire to stage a repeat.

Cautiously following Hux down to the hotel bar, they found Phasma sitting at a small quiet table in the corner, ignoring the intense attention she was getting from most of the men and half of the women in the bar. Taller even than Ben, the blonde was used to the attention, used it when she wanted to, ignored it the rest of the time, and hid her ruthless streak behind her classic good lucks and a deceptively soft-spoken manner. Ben cordially detested her, a sentiment she returned in spades.

"Kylo," she greeted him coldly as he sat down, having 'accidentally' discovered his middle name in the personnel files shortly after the disastrous retreat last year. She'd used it exclusively ever since, hoping to needle him, and as a result he was always careful to make a show of ignoring her attempts to get under his skin.

He nodded coldly at her in return. He hoped he looked as cool as he felt, knowing he'd need all his wits about him with these two and also trying not to read anything into the fact that the bar they were sitting in was the same one in which he'd first met Rey all those months ago.

Surely this had to be a coincidence? No one knew about that, unless Snoke had had him followed, and while he would put it past his boss to do so, he couldn't think of a specific reason why he would have done so on that particular night.

So. It had to be a coincidence. The question was, what was he doing here _now_?

Three hours later he had no more inkling of what the answer was to that question than he'd had when he first arrived. Hux made an issue of dancing around the issue of what, exactly, they were meant to be doing here, and as the three of them warily fenced with each other as they drank their obnoxiously expensive scotch (some more cautiously than others, Ben thought, though he wasn't sure if Hux's increasing intoxication was an act), he grew increasingly impatient. Dealing with open-ended mysteries had never been his strong suit.

He was on the point of making his excuses, gambling that he'd invested enough of his Thursday evening to have fulfilled the social niceties Snoke increasingly demanded, when Hux suddenly looked up from a text he'd just received and put down his drink abruptly. Waving over their waitress with more efficiency than politeness, he looked at his two companions.

"Finally. Our Glorious Leader is ready for us."

And all Ben could think was;

_What fuckery does the old fool have for us now?_


	9. Fucked

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Maz Kanata, the mentor I wish I'd had.

Rey wondered if someone had wandered over her grave. She couldn't stop shivering, even the temperature in her office was still set at a comfortable 22 degrees.

(She smirked a little to herself. She know she drew the staff crazy, but there was no way she was giving up the habits of a lifetime. She was sticking to metric.)

She shivered again. She'd worked late again tonight, there was really no reason not too, and while she was ramping up quickly, it still would take a while to get where she needed to be at Solo International, and she was grateful for all the patience Han had shown her. It had taken so much for her to get here, whether you counted it in years or sweat or degrees or effort, though she knew there was a ways to go as yet. She would forever be grateful for the confidence her old philosophy professor Maz Kanata had shown her when she'd insisted on introducing her to Han and Leia on one of their extended trips to the U.K. (She'd also be forever grateful that Maz had let her warm up with Han first; Leia Organa was beyond intimidating on first glance. Han Solo, on the other hand, was a the definition of marshmallow. She'd barely had to start talking about old cars before he'd practically dragged her into that chic Soho restaurant to meet his wife.)

Rey had worried, a bit, at first, at the implied nepotism there, worried about how it had enabled her to go from barely able to afford the U.K.'s state-subsidized tuition as a former foster kid to working for one of the most famous American senators on the planet. She'd wondered if it was really imposter syndrome or whether it was true what some of her less favoured former classmates had whispered; that 'sucking' up to Maz all those years, that being the 'teachers' pet' had finally paid off with the position on Leia's staff, that it really was a case of who you know.

_'Bullshit,' Maz had told her when she'd confessed her trepidation, her former mentor's glasses fogging up with indignation, an indication, Rey knew, of supreme irritation. 'Leia and Han told me to keep an eye for impressive candidates they might want to meet, you were hardly the only one, though, I will admit, one of my favourites. I didn't do the work for you, I wasn't responsible for you graduating Summa Cum Laude a year and a half ahead of schedule, and I didn't do the follow-through for you on the bureaucratic hoops you jumped through to get you here. I got you the introduction, kiddo, for a junior position, I might add, not the one you fucking worked you way into. The rest was up to you. So don't pay attention to those entitled little shits. Besides -' she'd told her, laughing, 'Leia is a notorious task-master. She'd always sure to get her money worth, and I'm sure it will be the same with you. Maybe you should be resentful of me for putting you in her path, hmmm?'_

Maz had been right, though Rey had never resented it. It had been good, to find a purpose, to find a centre, to find, well, a connection, not only to Leia and Han, but also to Rose and Finn and Poe. And Ben, to be honest, though she'd have to live for that one on hope. Something Maz had always told her, about people finding their way back, if they wanted to, if you were welcoming and patient, if they were able, had always stuck with her, and despite every indication, she still had that hope for the wayward Solo son, something she knew she had in common with his parents, though none of them spoke of it. 

She shivered again. Someone _had_ to be walking over her grave, she thought whimsically to herself. It was an old expression, something her grandfather used to say before he'd died. The feeling was one she'd never got used to. Something was definitely off, though she had no idea what it could be.

She'd just finished for the night, actually, and she had been taking a few minutes to appreciate the lights of the nation's capital. If she tilted her head all the way to the left and she squinted, she could just about see the Capitol building. Sure. Well, if she tilted her head all the way left, leaned so far into the glass that she banged her head, squinted and used her imagination, she could just about see the Capitol building. Still. A bad view was better than no view, and she appreciated the city lights, as she appreciated the natural light in the mornings that warmed her work space and kept her company as she cupped her coffee and braced for the demands of the day. Distracted, by the view, by her musings, by the sense that there was still something _missing_ it took her a minute to realize her cell was pinging with an incoming text.

_I want to fuck you like an animal._

Ben. He hadn't contacted her in weeks, not since that morning in the hotel room. They hadn't spoken or texted or made any sort of contact. And yet, somehow, here he was, sending her filthy quotes from the same nineties metal band whose most explicit song had been stuck in her head for days.

Ben.

What the hell was going on?

She picked up her phone, wondering it was best to answer or not. Even beyond the fact they hadn't spoken in weeks, this was not his usual routine. He had never been crass with her, never outside of the secret thoughts, at times filthy or funny or sweet or hot they'd whispered to each other in those anonymous hotel rooms. He'd never treated her with anything other but respect and civility. Never sworn around her, at her, near here. Never shown her that edge for which he's justly famous, that explosive temper of which she'd heard whispers and gossip. She's not sure where the lyrics from _Closer_ fit into that, but the fact was, something had changed, and she no longer knew what to expect. From him. From him. From this connection that she could not deny lingered and ebbed in the air around her every given day.

Two seconds later, it pinged again.

_I want to feel you from the inside._

And there was something in the air, some disturbance, something she couldn't place. Something was off, tonight, something was wrong. It wasn't just the sense of someone walking over her grave; it was the cool whisper of air that brushed over her skin when she least expected it, it was the overwhelming sense of unease, the fact that she couldn't find a way to centre herself, no matter how hard she tried. No matter what she tried. She'd grown used to it, the sense that something was missing, something was _incomplete_ , but this was different. This sense that something was _wrong_.

She texted before she could think.

_Ben._

_What the hell is going on?_

Barely before she'd sent it, barely before the delivered message had faded, he sent back: 

_Fucked. I'm totally fucked. Find me. Please._

Half an hour later, she found him in the lobby of her building, after she'd hurriedly packed her bag, flicking off the lights and all but running down the eight flights of stairs to where he'd told her she'd find him.

_What the fuck?_

She'd known something was wrong. She'd felt it. She hadn't been wrong. He looked wrecked. Wrecked, the impression of a man ruined emphasized in ways that she was sure only she would notice, and then only in the eyes. Physically, he looked as put together as always, his suit only slightly rumpled from what she assumed was a day a work, his hair still combed straight off his face and his body rock steady as he stood there. But his eyes. Dear God. His eyes were fathomless pools of dark. As she walked through the lobby, he turned to look at her, and it was as it was a everything he'd ever wanted to say and hadn't had spilled out in the eyes he'd locked onto her. As his soul had been ripped out, swirled around by someone who didn't know what they were doing, knew it and still didn't care, ripped out and then forced back in.

Controlling her urge to run, she made her way quickly to his side, looking up, way up, into the void.

"Ben?"

He stared a moment more at her, his mouth opening as he tried to figure out what words were, before she took charge.

"Easy there, Ben. You're coming home with me."


	10. Aftershocks

"I shouldn't have come here."

That much he knew was true. He was polluting her just by being here, just by breathing the same air. Just by looking her. Just by looking at the same stars which shone on her. Just by being bathed in their light. The only explanation was that his gaze was like a oil slick wrapping its way around her, already leaving a stain.

"Sorry. Rey - I'm so sorry. I - "

He'd known better, known all those months ago when he'd first met her, in that bar, in the same bar he'd left, only an hour or so ago. Known he'd pollute her, stain her, leave his grimy fingerprints all over in a mark she'd never be able to wash away. He just... he'd liked the thought so much, liked the idea that he'd mark her, somehow. That he'd make enough of an impression, physically, emotionally that she'd never be able to get rid of him, not completely, not fully. He hadn't been able to resist it all those months ago, and he hadn't been able to resist tonight. Even knowing he carried the stink of Snoke with him, he hadn't been able to resist. She'd drawn him in and he'd followed along, trusting that he could dance close to the flame and not end up on fire.

He'd been wrong, all those months ago, and he'd known it, even then.

Even knowing it, he'd ended up here.

"That's okay, Ben. Let me just get you settled."

The worst part was, she wasn't paying any attention at all to what he was saying, either his mumbled apologies or his strangled attempts to explain the impossible and humiliating position he'd put her in. He knows he's not making any sense, but he has to try. Has to at least try to be articulate enough to warn her. But it's so tempting to stay near her, to enjoy being this close to her. So he doesn't resist. He stops trying to get through to her, at least for now. Instead, he lets himself be carried along with her resolute determination as she'd swept him out the door of Solo International, of his _father's_ fucking building and into a waiting cab, making soothing noises as she settled him into the vehicle and buckled him into the back seat. As always, the light smell of her soap - is that mint and jasmine? - wrapped around him in the small confines of the cab, and as always, he can't help but lean in to breathe it in more fully. She smells like sunshine and summer to him and he's been addicted to it since that first moment she'd leaned into him as she laughed at his poor attempts at humour and touched him, ever so lightly, on the arm.

Rey Johnson. The woman his father actually refers to as and actually calls 'Sunshine'. His mother's protegee. The daughter his parents had always wanted. Hell, the child they'd always wanted, given that their first try had been such a disaster. And at the same time the only woman in the past decade who hadn't looked at him like he was the devil incarnate. Like he's capable of more than what Snoke had always demanded of him, was even capable of being more than being his parents' legacy, hell, that of his entire family. That he was worth more than the entirety of his bloodlines and could be valued for more than what he could give her, do for her. Well, that was done, he thought in disgust. No matter what happened tonight, he couldn't see a way back from its revelations. From the permanent damage that this would do to both of them.

He fought to focus, fighting back the insidious memories of what had gone down in Snoke's office, the memory of that oily voice and its disgusting promises and its snide insinuations. Desperately, he grabbed her hand where it lay next to his on the seat next to him. It was so small in his, so delicately formed where it lay in his monster paw, the difference only accentuating what he'd always known; he'd damage her, he'd known he would, the darkness in him inking out to stain everything she was. Knowing this, he tries to force his brain to focus on what he needs to do tonight, while at the same time it's just too easy to get distracted by the need to memorize every aspect of her face, her lips, her cheekbones, the hazel eyes which still sparkle that little bit even when they're looking at him with concern and worry. 

_Focus, Solo._

It was like trying to think through a thick fog.The booze - had he really drank that much? He didn't usually, how much had he had? Two in the bar with Phasma and Hux, right? He couldn't remember. It was difficult to remember a time, Before. Then, after - He'd only had one in Snoke's office, right? after his boss had insisted - the shock, this had to be shock, right? He'd never experienced it, but this out of body experience, this sense of confusion and loss and pain... was this what shock felt like? Like he couldn't get his lungs to cooperate enough to fully expand so he could inhale properly, breathe fully, leaving him consistently short of breath. Like he'd never be warm again, that he'd never feel again the warmth that comes from turning one's face to bask in the sun. 

Grasping her hand like a lifeline, he tried to focus on the evening lights of D.C. as the cab sped through the city's streets, the lack of traffic this time of night making him thankful indeed. It wasn't long before they pulled up before a small row of brownstones, recently converted, it looked like, into quiet apartments, similar to many of those in the Capital area. She'd paid the taxi fare and swept him along inside before he'd even had time to think, leaving him to stand awkwardly in her foyer just inside her apartment, unsure of how to convince his stubborn limbs to take him out of here before he did any more damage. Unable to do anything but watch her, her warmth acting like a lifeline out of the fog, beckoning him closer.

Fucked. He was totally fucked. 

***

"You look like a stiff breeze would knock you over."

He did. He'd always been pale, but he'd never looked as though she might possibly be able to see right through him. He suddenly snapped his focus to her, his brown eyes suddenly darker than she'd ever seen them, even during sex, burning into her, looking only the darker in contrast to his skin. Given that the man was six-three and built like a refrigerator, the fact that she really could see a strong breeze knocking him over was saying something. He was almost shaking and she was concerned he was actually in shock. What had happened tonight, what had happened to actually drive him to her after weeks of radio silence, it had to have been bad. She had to get him to sit before he fell over, and she had to make sure she calmed him down, and soon. 

"Ben? Are you okay?"

She walked over to look up at him, wondered suddenly if he was running a fever. He'd still to completely enter her apartment, hovering just inside the entrance, and though she was sure he wasn't swaying on his feet, she wouldn't have been surprised if he had been. 

"Come on, it's okay. We'll sit you down, get your shoes off - "

She was still wondering if she should get him an aspirin and a cool damp cloth to take care of his headache as she moved to take him over to the couch to sit him down before he fell down. She was grateful suddenly for her insistence on getting actual sized furniture, even if it was too large for her small D.C. space. He might actually fit, mostly, on her sectional. She looked for the throw she usually left at the edge of the sectional as she tried to move him over as the moment she touched him she found she was correct; he was shivering, though she doubted he was in any shape to notice.

"Ben?"

It was like shoving at a mountain, which was surprising given how tractable he'd been as she'd led him out of the building and into the cab, even into her apartment. Trying to get him to move now it was like he'd forgotten how his limbs worked, and then -

He grabbed her, his hands almost rough, one pushing up on her jaw to slant her mouth the way he wanted while the other buried itself in her hair to pull her head back. Time stood still as he assaulted her mouth again and again, tasting her, prying her mouth open with his tongue so he could invade it, his lips bruising hers, his teeth biting down lightly, oh so lightly, the gentle nips in such contrast to the way he has her bent back, drawn like a bow so tight it as if she might snap. His form, so much larger than her own, overwhelmed her, leaning over her, consuming her in his shadow, in his presence. 

Fuck, she'd missed this. Missed him.

When he pushed away she stumbles back, realizing in that moment that her arms had already been making their way up of their own volition to wind themselves around him. She knows herself and she's not afraid to admit that they had been on the knife's edge of falling back into their pattern, knew they had been only a moment or two away from her pushing him onto her couch so that she could climb him, get a better angle for all the things she's always loved doing to his lips, the right angle to let her bite that pulse point she loves, so she could rock herself into him as she played with his thick hair, almost raven in this light. Knows she had been calculating in the back of her brain how long it would take from that point to them being both naked enough so that he could slip into her the way they both craved. Knows she's been assessing, since the moment she got him in the door, how he would look sprawled across her bed for the first time.

Looking up at him, shocked, she noted that he still looked lost, even as his breath came out in pants and his eyes stayed locked on hers. Despite the strength and the power he'd shown moments before, now he looked wounded, vulnerable, pushed to the limit, and as she reached to console him, pull him down to sit, he flinched at her lightest touch, carefully edging around her to sit, almost falling into the chair as though he'd suddenly lost all strength, as though the very thought of touching her burnt him.

As he buried his face in his hands, his large body wrapping around itself, all she could hear were his desperate apologies.

_sorry, sorry, sorry_ \- 

"Ben, it's fine. Tell me. Whatever it is. We'll tackle it together - "

He looks up again at her approach, and dear God, she'd thought he'd looked lost before.... His eyes are like bottomless pits, and he looks as if he's aged ten years in as many minutes. Squatting down to be able to look him the eye, she wonders again who could have done this much damage to him. There's only one person she can think of, who might be capable of it, but he's been Snoke's right hand for over a decade and it seems inconceivable that Snoke would want to damage his top enforcer if only because he wouldn't want to expend the resources to recruit one as capable as Ben. 

"I had to come. I had to. I'm sorry, need to warn you. So sorry. I'll go afterwards, I swear, I just - had to let you know, warn you - Snoke - "

"Ben - "

"He set us up."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "What would an angel say, the devil wants to know?" Fiona Apple, Criminal


	11. Violations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: non-consensual recordings by a third party. The only really important thing to know is that Snoke had the room bugged and therefore has a high-quality of Ben and Rey's first night tonight. And possibly more. It was unclear from what he told Ben as to whether he set the meeting up in the first place.  
> If you want to skip that, just go to "Ben - " "No, - I'm sorry, I wasn't ready to stop.

Ben told her he wasn't sure if his boss had set up their original meeting in that hotel bar.

But he did know the prick had had his room bugged.

Snoke had tape of the entire night. Of her throwing Ben into the wall. Of them kissing, of him yanking up her skirt, of the way he'd torn her underwear off of her and it had fallen unheeded from his hand onto the floor, as he'd been too impatient to get it out of the way to bother with doing anything else. Of the way he'd tormented her with his fingers and groaned as she gotten wet for him, around her as he pumped his fingers into her. _So wet. So quick and so wet for me._ Of the way she'd balanced herself as she'd climbed him like a tree, desperate to get high enough to be able to get her legs around his waist while he'd struggled to get his pants undone. Oh God. The way she'd dropped her head to his shoulder after she'd come all over his cock and shuddered as he'd poured into her. The way she'd breathed incoherent nonsense into his ear, afterwards. The way she'd mumbled over and over again into the shoulder of his suit jacket that he'd never actually gotten off: _Thank fuck._

They'd done a thorough job, the people Snoke had hired, clearly. Top of the line package, apparently. The video came with full audio, Ben confessed to her. Everything they'd said, everything she'd whispered in his ear, every moan and whimper and groan and scream and growl. Her begging him to fuck her as he pumped himself into her over and over, the way she'd moaned when touched her, his massive hands holding her up securely against the hotel room wall. The dirty, delightful, decadent things he'd whispered into her ear as she'd moaned around him. 

No wonder he looked a little broken, looking up at her now.

"How could you possible know that?" She demanded, though she couldn't quite get her voice to cooperate, couldn't get it to work, to do what she needed, to scream at him in frustration and fear and rage the way she wanted. How could he possibly know what was on the recording -

"He played it for me."

"He played it - "

She felt as all the breath had left her lungs and she suddenly knew she would never be warm again. Wrapping her arms around her middle, she paced the floor while refusing to meet his eyes, as they pleaded with her, as he watched her every move.

She tried it again. Tried to find her voice.

"He played it. For you. What the fuck sick ass game are you playing - ?"

" **NO!** "

He sprung from his seat, and though careful not to touch her, he stood directly in front of her, staring down at her, his warm brown eyes so much darker now, boring into hers.

"I mean, I didn't know until tonight. He called us to see us, me and Hux and Gwen - "

"He showed the tape to your co-workers?!?"

"Thankfully, no," he sighed, and as he ran his hand through his thick black hair she thanked God for small mercies. "No, he held me back, after they'd left. And then he showed me. Rey, I swear - I had no idea. I swear to you."

"That the meeting in the bar could have been a set-up or that he was _taping_ the entire fucking thing?"

"Either. I swear. I swear it to you, Rey. It was real for me, I swear. It took me a minute to place you, and then once I had, and you still weren't up in my face screaming at me, weren't calling me a monster, it seemed like you knew who I was too, that you were willing to pretend there wasn't all this baggage between us. I was having a good time, I'm sorry - "

"Ben - "

"No - I'm sorry, I wasn't ready to stop. Talking to you, I mean. Laughing with you. Playing silly games with you."

_You know, like two normal, lonely people in a bar on a Thursday night with no one else to see and nowhere in particular to go._

"I liked it. Talking to you. Laughing with you. And when you weren't disgusted by the thought of going upstairs with me, I thought - well, okay, at that point I wasn't doing a lot of thinking."

Fair. Neither was she, at that point.

"But after, maybe I thought, why not see where this goes."

 _Why not have a little fun? Why not play a little?_ , the little devil had whispered in the back of her ear as she'd sat in that taxi without underwear, still smelling like him, still _feeling_ him, and read his text as she found her way back to her apartment later that night.

_You could fuck me up a little, Rey._

_Wanna try?_

He wasn't surprised she wasn't looking at him, let alone not looking him in the eye.

_...you let me violate you._

***

She looked like she'd been hit by a truck. She'd finally sat down, in the seat furthest from where he sat on her sofa, and it looked like the shock had finally set in. She was pale under the gentle tan she seemed to sport year round, her unnatural paleness making her freckles stand out all the more and her normal vitality had been drained to the point where he wondered exactly how she was still sitting up.

Fuck.

How the fuck had he gotten her into this mess.

She'd been nice to him, _goddamn it_ , nice and funny and sweet and... She called him on his bullshit and let him feed her and fucked him like a semi-feral, touch-starved demon. He couldn't get it out of his head, how much he wanted her, how lucky he'd been to have her be willing to drive out the darkness with her body and her laugh.

_Fuck._

Even yesterday, hell, even this morning, even though he hadn't talked to her for weeks, even then, he hadn't felt like it was done. Knew they'd find their way back to one another, on more straightforward if also more complicated terms.

That was done now, he knew.

They were done. He'd ruined it, ruined it just by being him and putting her in Snoke's orbit. Making her vulnerable to his notice. What had he been thinking? How could he have exposed her to _that_? To his world, to the people he knew? What kind of person was he to repay her warmth and kindness by exposing her to that?

Awkwardly, he struggled to get up. He'd come here to warn her, and he had. Now he had to do the decent thing and get out of her life before he had the chance to fuck it up even further. He had no idea how he was going to sort out this mess with Snoke and the fucking tape, but he had to figure it out. It was his mess and he had to deal with it, make sure it spilling over her anymore than necessary.

That tape. Fuck. He hadn't been able to believe it when Snoke had streamed earlier. The prick had shown it on the screen mounted on the wall of his office, the same place Hux had streamed the annual financial reports last month.

_You let me penetrate you._

Fuck.

The only saving grace was that Hux and Phasma had already left. It was the only reason he could think of for why he hadn't jumped over Snoke's desk and choked the life out of him then and there. That and the shock. When he realized what was happening, when he recognized Rey's face from that night in the footage... it had taken everything he had not to throw up. Snoke had only played the first few minutes before he'd forced him to shut it down, but in those few minutes... He closed his eyes and tried to hold back the migraine. The video footage of them together had painted a clear picture, and he was sure Snoke had the whole thing locked away somewhere. On top of that, the audio had been crystal clear. His voice, hers.

Fuck.

He had no idea what he was going to do, but he had to do _something._

He stole a glance at Rey. She was white as a sheet.

"I - I know it's bad. I'm sorry. I can't say it enough. I'm so, so sorry. Rey - I, I don't know how I'm going to fix this, but I will, I swear - you'll never have to see me again, or him - I _swear I'll fix_ \- "

"What does he want?"

Her voice was rough, harsh, unlike he'd ever heard it.

"I don't - "

"What is it? Cause it has to be _something_ , Ben. Why would he go to all that trouble, just on the _off_ chance we ended up there that night -"

The way she'd tasted that night. The way she'd felt. It had felt like he'd gotten a hold of something precious that he couldn't quite hold and needed to grab it all before it disappeared. He'd lost all control that night. With her. With himself. They'd been laughing downstairs in the bar, and then, by the time she'd gotten to his room, he'd, lost it. Like a part of him thought if he managed to get his scent on her _enough_ , she'd never be able to wash him off, not fully. He'd set out to ruin her for anyone else, and instead he'd ruined himself. One of the greatest nights of his life and he'd fucked it up any tiny chance he had with her. Just by being there. Just by being him.

"I don't know. I don't even know if it was specific to that night, to you, or if he, just, had the room bugged to make sure he had leverage on me - "

It was a company suite, after all.

But, it was just too convenient. Rey being there, her connection to his parents -

"Hell, I don't know. He likes to control, maybe he was just playing the odds, that you'd be at an event at that hotel, that he wanted to throw us together so much, just to see how I would react. I - I don't know."

She was staring at him.

"We're at that hotel a lot..."

"A lot...?"

"Yeah, we hold a lot of events there, or are at a lot of events there. I take it he's the one who put you there, insisted you use the company suite?"

"That's right....when the pipes in my apartment burst" - which was also a company apartment - "he had his assistant book me there before I even thought about where I'd go."

 _I can't have you distracted worrying about this, Benjamin_ , he heard Snoke's voice whisper in his ear as if it were yesterday. _Need you focused on your work_.

"At the time, I just thought, he was trying to be nice, sort of, in his way, that and to make sure I didn't have any excuse for slacking off on the job..."

"You thought he was being fucking _nice_?"

It was funny, well not really, but he may have finally shocked her. From the look on her face it was as if she was unable to visualize a universe where Christian Snoke was _nice_. Despite everything, he tried not to laugh. It was true, but -

"He's tried, somewhat, before..." he tried, awkwardly.

How to explain without going through that whole mess with Luke, without explaining how he'd ended up here, and he didn't want to burden her with all that, especially given her connection to his parents and now, this. 

"- though now I wondering if it was part of his long-term goal to - "

"- make sure you met a nice girl who worked with your mother and get you to entrap her into making a sex tape with you?"

_You let me desecrate you._

Fuck. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fucking Snoke. 
> 
> Yell at me, I deserve it.


	12. Intimacies

Later, much later, she tucked an exhausted Ben into her bed in her quiet dark room, trying not to hyper-fixate on how he looked with his dark hair, like a raven's wing but slightly lighter, spilled out on her pillow, cuddled into her bed for the first time, his large frame looking surprisingly at home even as his feet threatened to spill over the end. His shiny black dress shoes were still sitting in the alcove of her entry way, he'd brushed his teeth with her spare toothbrush (still fresh from its plastic wrapper) and his blazer was hanging over one of her dining room chairs. She could smell the essence of him, imprinted in the rich fabric, dark grey in this light, while she'd sat on her couch and had waited for him to be comfortable enough for her to tuck him into the bed she hadn't had time to make that morning before she'd left for work at his father's company. Tonight, after he'd exhausted himself with all he'd had to tell her, he'd let her tuck him into that very bed and she left him there, sleeping so peacefully, as she went to sit on her small patio, as she stared up at the stars and wondered what the hell she was going to do. 

Not tonight. She had known immediately what she had to do tonight. She hadn't been able to send Ben 'home' (if you could even call it that), couldn't send him back to that soulless flat she imagined Snoke had set up for him and which was probably crawling with recording devices. She imagined he wouldn't be able to settle there comfortably ever again, in any case, even he had the entire thing swept and cleared. Not knowing what Snoke had done. Not knowing that the broken pipes and, indeed, the entire set-up had probably all been part of his boss's plan to set them up, not with the endgame still unknown. 

Cradling a mug of tea in her hands, she leaned the back of her head against the headrest of her Muskoka chair and hoped to hell inspiration would strike her. Instead, the memories of all she and Ben had done kept replaying in her head. Every moment, every kiss, every time they'd come together (or come apart), every time they'd trusted each other with their bodies, with their time, with, yes, she could admit it, at least to herself, with their hearts. Or hers, at least. It may have started as a game for her, this idea, of messing with the devil, of using him for her own gratification while laughing at the irony. It may have started for the fun of it, for the joy of playing with fire. For the joy of the sex, if she was honest with herself. At some point, though, it had become more than that. At some point she'd had to admit that she cared for this man. More than she'd ever thought possible. 

She wondered at what point that had been. Was it that night, before the snowstorm, when she'd spent the night? There had been something about that night, a feeling that had snuck in and buried itself deep inside her even as he'd done the same. Earlier that night, when she'd glanced over at him in that crowded ballroom, trying to be discreet, seen that shadow cross his face as he spoke to his parents, seen that vulnerable shadow of regret and pain that he'd been unable to hide - he'd never had the best poker face, after all - she'd felt the urge. To soothe, to help, to stroke her hand down the small of his back, to use her touch to reassure him, to find a _way_ to touch him, even through the fabric of his clothes.

But no. She be lying to herself if she didn't admit it had begun long before that, this feeling that had stuck in her gut. Maybe even at the very beginning, that first night, when they'd sat in that hotel bar that first night, laughing quietly together for hours. She'd no idea he'd have such a nice laugh. She'd had no idea how much he would make _her_ laugh. How much he would be capable of making her feel warm, feel wanted.

_'So that's your specialty, then? Naughty little boys.'_

_She'd laughed, then, looking up across the table at him, his face so open, so relaxed, the smile splitting his face and showcasing his beautiful dimples that bracketed his crooked grin, his warm brown eyes sparkling._

_'Indeed. Though I always say they are less naughty than - over-excited.'_

_'Well, then. I can only defer to your expertise.'_

_She'd tilted her head at him, holding onto the smile she could feel gently curve her lips._

_'I wonder if you are capable, then, of dealing with naughty boys of all ages.'_

_'Well, I'm always open to a challenge.'_

_'You could take care of them, then? Naughty boys? Big ones, especially?'_

_She tried to make her answering smile as wolfish as she felt, taking her time to look him up and down slowly, lingering on his long legs, his lean torso and his broad shoulders before her eyes drifted down again to concentrate on every aspect of his physique as he preened in front of her, the cocky shit._

_'Big boys in need of discipline,' she'd told him them, pausing to take a sip of her wine and watch as his gaze lingered on her lips as she carefully licked the taste of it off of them, 'really_ are _my_ _specialty_. _The bigger, the better._ '

Now, several months later, as the man in question slept in her bed, she reevaluated exactly what she'd been playing at, that night. How far he'd wormed his way into her heart since. How much she'd come to care for him. Finally wondering. Where they went from there. The price the two of them would be forced to pay, for what realistically, was a consensual arrangement between two grown adults who'd decided not to ignore the attraction that sparked the moment they touched. Was it really, fair, she wondered, to make them suffer for that? Was it really necessary? Was this connection of theirs really the concern of anyone other than themselves?

No. And she knew there had to be a way to cut Snoke off at the knees. 

Realistically, she knew there was only one direction she could turn to for help, as awkward as this was inevitably going to be, and as reluctant as she knew Ben would be to the idea. She winced. She needed the advice of a master tactician, even if that meant she had to confess to her mentor and former boss that she needed her help figuring out what do about the sex tape she'd inadvertently made with said mentor's son. She only prayed they didn't need to drag Han into it, at least not at first. She wasn't sure any of them would recover. (Plus Han insisted on making the most unfortunately outrageous puns when he was uncomfortable. It was like he just couldn't help it.) 

Looking at the time - it was after 3 a.m. - she knew she'd have to wait for the morning before she could enlist their help. It was probably for the best. She and Ben had to come up with a plan, together, and soon. Even if she had to make this particular phone call alone. Still, she could wait a couple of hours. Leia was an early riser. She'd call her first thing. In the meantime, there looked like there was nothing to be done but brush her teeth and curl up on her couch and get some sleep. Even mostly dressed as Ben was, there was no way she was sleeping in her own bed next to him tonight. Hell, for that matter, she wasn't sure she'd ever be able to sleep with anyone ever again without having someone sweep the room for bugs. Her thoughts running increasingly incoherently through her brain, she knew she'd find it hard to sleep as she curled up on her sofa for a few hours. Indeed, it was almost impossible to sleep that night, as the images running across the back of her eyelids kept going, again as if from a movie, an X-rated one at that - as she wondered again and again how they'd ended up here. And how the fuck they were going to get out of this. As she finally drifted off, her final thoughts were black ones.

Fucking Snoke. 

***

Rey had worked long enough for Leia to know her routine. Up at 6, work out, to enjoy her coffee while she caught up on the news, checked her email and social media and waited for Han to crawl out of bed, grumbling, so they could have breakfast together at 7 am before they headed out to start their respective days. She never felt completely centred, she'd told Rey, it seems like ages ago now, when they ate their first meal apart. (And not only so she could monitor how much bacon he ate.)

'I don't trust that man as far as I can throw him when it comes to bacon. Never have. Besides, we're both busy, you know? You have to find a way to make it work. And,' she smirked, 'getting Han before the crack of dawn is impossible. I could vacuum in the bedroom, he still wouldn't wake up. When Ben was younger, I'd send him in wake his father up, since he was the only one he wouldn't snap at. The only problem was that if I left them too long, sometimes I'd find them curled up together under the covers and I'd have to rustle them _both_ out of bed.' 

Now, she mentally apologized to both her former and current bosses as she FaceTimed Leia's number precisely at 6:02 that morning. This was a conversation was one best done while you looked someone in the eye. As she explained exactly what was going on as Leia listened intently, curled up in a peach-coloured robe, the concern in her eyes only deepened before morphing into something else. Meanwhile Rey tried not to notice how her friend looked older and more tired than she'd ever seen her as she tried to process what exactly what had been going on with the two of them and she mentally damned every impulse she'd ever had when it came to her mentor's son.

"It's - a lot to take in, Rey."

"I know. I'm sorry - for the situation, for dragging you in - "

"Relax. I'm not saying it's ideal, but just so you know, under different circumstances, your being involved with Ben would have been.... something I would have welcomed."

_Fuck. Right in the heart._

"Though I - I'm trying not to interfere, but I am asking. Just to be clear, you are set on the two of you being definitely done?"

"I - I don't know."

She hadn't known yesterday and she didn't know today. 

"Where is he now? Do you know?"

Rey swallowed.

"To tell the truth, he's sleeping in my bed. Which isn't to say - I mean - " she blushed as Leia quietly raised her brow. "I slept on the couch. He wasn't well, he was in no condition to go home last night. Leia -"

"Relax."

As Leia's mouth quirked, reminded her so strongly of her son, Rey could only stare. 

"I told you. Something I would welcome. I wasn't born yesterday and the two of you have been grown for a long time. And Rey - I'm glad you're there to take care of him."

"Um. Thanks."

"I never told him enough. How much I, how much we, love him. I never told him that it doesn't come with strings. Having someone love you; it's not a reward for being good. Being loved, especially by your parents, isn't something you have to fight for or earn or ask for. Or at least, it shouldn't be. It doesn't come with conditions. Or at least, it shouldn't. I didn't tell him, or at least I didn't tell him _enough_ that he never had to be perfect for me. That I'd always love him, no matter what.'

She paused a moment to clear her throat, before swiping quickly under her eye with the pad of her finger.

'Now - Let's talk about where we go from here."

Leia leaned in the screen of the phone, capturing Rey's eyes with her own and lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, drawing a veil of privacy over them. 

‘You and me, Rey - We’re stealing my son back.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's hard to resist the pull of that little thought rattling around in your head - 'there’s someone like me. Someone who understands.' Especially if you've never had a family of your own, or a sense of belonging.


	13. Changing Positions

He shouldn't be nervous. He wasn't nervous. He reminded himself of that, over and over, as his leg bounced, jiggling up and down in the leg well of the rented car no matter how he tried to control it. Long car rides made him jittery that was all. Yeah, that was it, long car rides. Nothing else.

Oh, and the fact that Rey had decided to read his mother in on their sex life. Though, to be fair, there wasn't much sex at the moment, even if -

"Ben."

Startled, he looked over at his companion, the small car putting them into closer proximity than he was sure she had to be comfortable with. She was faking it well, though. He couldn't imagine she'd ever be comfortable with him again, after everything that had happened. Trying not to be obvious, he stared at her out of the corner of his eye before finding a way to rest his head on the headrest so he could discreetly turn his head to look at her, safely hidden behind his sunglasses. Her hair was tied up in some sort of complicated looking bun, her profile presented to him as she concentrated on driving, even as the oversized sunglasses hid her expression in ways that made him unaccountably angry. He'd never been able to read her, not really, and not being able to read her changeable eyes made it even harder.

Fuck, this was going to be a long trip, even if he didn't want it to end. For any number of reasons.

"Yeah," he asked, his voice rough from disuse and the hang-over he'd woken up with this morning.

"Lunch? Thoughts? I have to warn you, I'm going to make an executive decision soon."

***

Rey was surprised the car was big enough to contain him.

She'd ordered a mid-size, but really, she should have upgraded to an SUV - it was the only vehicle that might have been big enough to hold him. It wasn't just his size, it was all of him, and all of him was a lot. His nervous exhaustion alone took up the entirely of the front seat. He fit, physically, in the seat next to her, though she'd noted he'd slid his seat as far back as it would go, trying to make room for his never-ending legs, currently stretched out in front of him, but the sense of him overwhelmed her, as she just sat quietly next him.

He'd fallen back asleep, finally, the physical and mental exhaustion haven taken a toll, as was, she was sure, the wicked hangover she could read in the back of his eyes, normally so clear and alert. The sports drinks and the over the counter meds she'd plied him with had taken off the edge, he'd told her, though she imagined it was the greasy food she'd forced him to eat that was responsible for the fact that he was still alive and slumbering next to her, his eyes hidden behind dark glasses and his gloriously plush mouth hanging open only a little. She'd almost been tempted to take him to the hospital, there was really no reason he should be that hung-over, given the fact that he'd told her he'd eaten last night at the bar and given the run down she'd made him give her of the drinks he'd had. 

_Three, maybe four, scotches? Over four hours? I don't know, couldn't have been more than that. Singles,_ he told her. _the scotches. I don't like the feeling, the fuzziness around the edges, when you drink too much. I don't like losing control. I don't like people seeing me like that._

Especially Hux and Phasma, she imagined. 

So this hang-over seemed too much, too intense for that. She wouldn't have put it past them, or Snoke, to have slipped him something, which, in addition to the shock... 

She nibbled nervously on her fingernail as she stole another look at the clock on the dashboard. She'd should have taken him to the hospital? Maybe she should take him now? Only he'd been so insistent and he seemed to be doing so much better now, and she wasn't sure she should wake him. Focusing on the road, she noted they were making good time, relatively speaking, only four and half hours to go and they should be in northern Vermont. She stole another look at Ben, worried. It had taken both her and Leia talking very, very quickly to get Ben to this point, into this car, and she wasn't sure exactly how it was going to go once they got where they were going. It had taken an incredible confluence of events to convince Ben to get this far, even hung-over, even with Leia and Han and her pushing it, and even given the potential consequences from Snoke's betrayal. She wasn't sure she blamed Ben for his reluctance to make this trip, given what Leia had told her about his relationship with the man waiting on the other end.

But if they wanted Ben back, truly, seriously back, for good, then they all knew they would have to confront what had happened all those years ago.

_"It might be easier if it I give you some context," Leia had told her. "And, bear with me, it's going to sound a little crazy."_

_"Her family's special," Han had kicked in before Leia could stop him, making an overly exaggerated sign for quotations with his fingers, and Rey had struggled to muffle her laughter, watching as Leia had thrown_ _a pillow at her husband. He must have been expecting it, though, given how quickly he'd dodged._

_"My family has a complicated history -'_

_"Everyone's family has a complicated history, sweetheart."_

_"Han!"_

_Another pillow went sailing across the room._

_'What? It's totally true. Your family's not complicated, princess, it's seriously fucked up."_

_"Ignore my husband, Rey. Though I suppose he'd mostly right. My family is seriously fucked up, and I never managed to protect Ben from that, not enough, anyway. I suppose you've heard of my father, Anakin Skywalker? Or maybe not? It was a long time ago, after all. He was regarded as a serious political contender at one time, around the time he married my mother, Padme Amidala."_

_"The famous suffragette?"_

_"That's the one. Well, once upon a time, in a land far away - "_

_"Otherwise known as Connecticut - " Han kicked in again as he stole a sip from his wife's coffee cup on the way over the machine to pour himself one before topping hers up and returning it._

_"Thank you. Yes. Connecticut. They were the IT couple of the 1940s, at least in that scene. My father had risen from nothing, made a fortune and with it all the right connections and was being groomed for Senator, and though they had a_ difficult _relationship, everyone thought the two of them would rise together, they were that well-regarded, and no one could deny that they were madly in love, even if they sometimes brought out, well, not the worst in each other, but they did bring out each others' most reckless tendencies."_

_She'd paused, then, to take a sip of her coffee and stare a moment, at nothing and something, while Han and Rey had let her have her moment, to imagine, perhaps, what it would have been like, had her mother lived to raise her and her twin brother. Better? Worse? Or the same but different? It was a game Rey had played a million times, when she found herself losing time in thought imagining what her life would have been like, had her parents decided to stick around. Hells, if her parents had done anything to give her a decent start other than dropping her off at the nearest local fire station._

_"Anyway." Leia shook herself like a duck shaking off lake water, coming back to the moment with her husband and Rey._

_"When my mother died, shortly after giving birth to my brother and I - which is one reason why I've always been so outspoken about the rates of maternal mortality globally , by the way, pregnancy still being a condition from which too many women die- my father, he, well, he imploded, for lack of a better word._ _Personally he never recovered, and politically, well, let's just say, he went dark. Howard Hughes dark. 'Hide out in the dark and rail against global conspiracies' dark. 'Give outrageous interviews and interrupt presidential press conferences' dark. He was never regarded as a serious political contender, after that."_

_"Not the best environment to raise young children in," Han said softly, and Rey noted the way his thumb made soft circles as it rested gently on his wife's shoulder._

_"No," Leia confirmed softly. "He sent us to live with my mother's cousin shortly after we were born, which wasn't that unusual in those days - there wasn't a lot of expectation that a single father would take over as the primary caregiver for two newborns, not in that social scene, even if you could afford it, even with help - and they - Bail and Breha Organa - raised us. Don't get me wrong, I loved my father, but without the Organas - let's just say I'm not sure who I would have been."_

_"You kept their name."_

_"I did. Luke, my brother, never changed his, he's always been a Skywalker, but I wasn't comfortable with it, with the legacy, and with my father's - expectations - once I returned to live with him after I made my formal debut in polite society. And then, of course, after I ran off with this nerfherder five years later - "_

_"Don't listen to her, kid. I ran off with her."_

_"You ran_ after _me, more like."_

_He smiled softly at her and Rey had to look away as they seemingly forgot all about her._

_"There weren't enough scoundrels in you life."_

_"Well, you took care of that. Anyway, after that, my father sort of cut his losses when it came to me. He'd hoped I make a splendid political marriage, restore his political fortunes to a certain extent, through my husband, of course, not me, and when it became apparent that I didn't intend to follow his_ guidance _in regards to my marriage, my future and my family, he cut me off financially and personally. He_ _and Luke continued to have a complicated connection, though it was one I've never understood."_

_"Told you, princess. Fucked up is par for the course in your family. And we did alright, you and I."_

_"True," she smiled up at him and for a moment Rey caught a glimpse of the pair they must have made around the time of their marriage, the petite society princess and the impudent scoundrel determined to make his mark. "He died, when Ben was only small, my father, though my son does tell me he made a lasting impression."_

_"Seriously, it's a good thing Ben's got a fair bit of Solo in him," her husband cut in once again._

_"Han!"_

_"Hey! All the good stuff he gets from me," he paused to wink at Rey,"it's the reason he's able to roll with the punches. Not to mention he got the rugged good looks, the height AND the charm, even if he gets the brains from my overly anxious wife. Seriously though, princess, I mean, Solos are often a bit rough around the edges, but at least we're not burdened by all that Skywalker legacy."_

_"He's not entirely wrong," Leia had told her later, after Han had left them to go shower and they discussed their next steps. "It would have been easier if Ben hadn't had to deal with the Skywalker history, even if I tried to shield a lot of it from him. I would never tell him, but Han is right. Ben's got so much of his father's heart in him. He's so much more at ease with himself than we are."_

_"Ben? At ease? With himself? I know he's your son, but have you met him? He's never been at ease."_

_With himself or anyone else. Except, maybe, that morning, curled in bed with her while the snow fell. Or maybe in those moments after they'd both fucked each other senseless, after they'd both found each other, after they breathed in the relief of losing themselves together and she'd bury her head in his neck and concentrate on breathing and reminding herself that this was only for a moment, this connection, that it wasn't real even as she acknowledged to herself that it was everything and anything but fake. She felt it then, sometimes, how he'd breathe a sigh that matched her own and found his own peace. So yes, there'd been times, she admitted, when it seemed he'd been at peace, safe in her arms, in her hotel room bed, in his car with her under him, over him, surrounding him._

_At ease, though? It was hard to imagine Ben Solo at ease._

_"Tell me that again after you meet my brother."_


	14. I Broke Apart My Insides

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay between the chapters and apologies as well, I had to up the chapter count - this is going to take a little longer than I thought and I wanted to do my characters full justice here. 
> 
> Thank you for your patience though and I can barely express how much I appreciate all the love and comments and kudos you've gifted this fic with. You've been so generous with your engagement and I'm so grateful for each of you!
> 
> A special thanks to Cecilia at @ceciliasheplin  
> for nominating it to the Reylo hidden gems collection and to Ari at @reylocaltrash  
> for the incredible moodboard!  
>    
> I- I'm just so overwhelmed and THANK YOU all!

"This is not going to go the way you think."[](https://pin.it/4ySFynq)

The nagging hangover was still there, but more than anything else, he couldn’t get over how much he ached, even down to his bones. It was as if the heaviness in his chest had spread through him, dragging down every inch of his body. He couldn’t get over how it weighed on him. How tired he was, how thirsty, how he couldn't think of how to focus on anything at hand. The food she’d forced into him had helped, the same with the sports drinks, the meds, the extra sleep. Still, he couldn't shake the depression dragging at his limbs and soul as he watched her capable hands on the steering wheel, as he remembered how they'd felt on his skin, how they got closer and closer to Atlantic shore of Connecticut where his uncle lived. Or maybe that was just the headache he'd yet to completely shake that lingered, feeling like someone had stabbed him with an ice pick and left it there, sticking out of his skull, to fester.

He wasn’t sure Rey had heard him at first, though to be honest, he wasn’t sure if he had meant her to. Wasn't sure who'd he'd meant that comment for. She merely hummed under her breath and turned the car stereo up a little, meaning the classic rock station they were listening to went from being an underlying hum in the small vehicle to a barely discernable accompaniment to the tension that filled the car, hanging so thick it was barely disturbed even as he cleared his throat to try again.

"Do you have to look so perky?"

He winced at that – _smooth, Ben, real smooth_ – and tried to remind himself to run words through his brain before just blurting them out. It’s just she looked so alive and vibrant and in tune with her surroundings, almost a deliberate contrast, he was sure, to him. He winced at how his voice came out, choked and rough and deep with sleep, appropriate given how he felt at the moment. He’d felt like death warmed over since the moment he’d woken and he was sure he looked it.

She looked like a dream come to life.

He had to stop staring, even if he didn't want to. Carefully, he folded both hands in his lap, controlling them firmly even as he felt the tremble. Maybe if he pinched them a little, he wouldn’t forgot, wouldn’t reach out to feel the way the warmth of her skin felt under his. He’d always felt so warm, so engaged, when he was with her, like he was actually living and not just observing those around him for cues as to how to fake it. Concentrating, he watched her lips form words and tried to make sense out of the sounds they made, though he had only the barest inclination to do, wishing instead he could fall back asleep with her voice a soothing lullaby. She could curse at him all she liked, as long as he could relax with the sound of that voice as a soothing balm.

"Oh, look, Sleeping Beauty's rejoined the land of the living. And so complimentary, too. Perky? Why, thanks there, Solo. It's nice to see you, too. It's only been weeks of radio silence, you know, since you ghosted me, threw me out of that small world we'd built together, cut me out the moment I made a choice you disapproved of."

"Rey - "

He winced, though she’d barely raised her voice.

"Which, to be honest, I still have no idea why you did it? I mean, working for one parent – like your mother - is fine, apparently, but the other isn't? I hate to break it to you, Solo, but they're still happily married. They have breakfast together daily - hell, they were having breakfast together this morning when I FaceTimed them as you were sleeping. Your father stole half of your mother’s bacon while she was distracted, though she did slap his hand away. I think she was distracted by his complaining, though, since he was quite put out the bacon wasn't real, but, I mean, really, who can blame him - "

He could picture it easily, the scene she painted. It was a habit his parents had engaged in since before he could remember, sharing food, even if his mother made a show of disapproving of his father’s eating habits. Han had bribed him, as a child, to steal his mother’s bacon. Hell, once he’d had the brilliant idea of stealing the entire pan before Leia could grab it. They’d laughed for days and even now he could remember how warm he'd felt listening as they'd told the story over and over to everyone they knew. 

"Rey - "

"They say 'hi' by the way. "

"Rey-" 

"So really, I don't know why you're being pissy with me. You're the one who decided we had to end this, you're the one who cut me off, practically ghosted me. I swear, I thought I saw you walking down the street last week and I could have sworn you deliberately went to turn and walk the other way. So it's not like you can blame me for the fact we haven't seen each other in weeks. You know, until you showed up at my office last night, drunk, after midnight, after texting me filthy song lyrics all day -

"Rey - "

_I was trying – to stay away from you, but I couldn’t, not fully, even if I knew I’d never be able to, but it would better, so much better if you had._

" - from forgotten novelty pop songs from the nineties, no less - "

_Though maybe it was too late, even then. Maybe we were cursed before we even met._

"Rey - "

" - from before my time, like, from, like, actually before my time."

She was on a tear now, fully launched into her tangent, and he knew he would never be able to cut her off, even if it made the pressure building up between his eyebrow tighten like a vise, throbbing even more than before. No matter how hard he pressed at the pulse points at his temple, nothing helped, it just keep tightening, making him wish for an ice pack.

"Rey - "

"I mean it, Ben, when I looked it up - and how fucked up was that, I actually had to look up the lyrics - You were texting me dirty lyrics from songs that are barely younger than I am."

'Rey! I'm begging you,' he groaned, trying to not to whine.

He rubs at the bridge of his nose again, and for a minute he thinks she's getting ready to take pity on him, and given how hungover he is, how stressed and tired and well, sad, he is, how pathetic he knows he has to look (looking in the mirror this morning he’d done a double take). Still, there's a part of him that just wants her to want to make him suffer, at the very least by talking at him so determinedly when he just wants to lay his head back against the seat rest and wait to die. A part of him wants it, hell, he deserves it after all he’d done. The way he'd cut her out of his life is the least of her, putting her through weeks of radio silence and then reaching out, desperate, unable to stop himself. And no one has ever accused Rey of being a shrinking violet. She’s tough and she’s apparently ready to kick his ass. He’s ready to let her.

Still.... 

'That's the part that's bothering you? My choice in song lyrics.’ He can’t help but smile at her, forcing his lips to curl upward the bare minimum to indicate a change of expression. ‘Because, of everything that has happened and everything we’ve done that's not the part I would be worried about. Hell, given what we're about to do, it's the last thing I would be worried about."

"You want to tell me exactly what we are planning to do? Your mother was a bit vague. About what exactly our objective is here, number one, and number two, what exactly the situation is between you and your uncle." 

"You notice the snow? So pretty this time of year. Like a fluffy blanket. At times I miss it. You don’t get snow like this in the city. Give it a couple of weeks and it will all be grey and rainy. Right now, it's like a postcard."

"Really? Ben? Snow? We're going to talk about snow. Snow. And the weather. In the northeast. Where it snows for months. That's really the way you want to play it, Solo?"

He tears his eyes from hers, grateful again for the way the sunglasses make it easier for him to observe her safely, even if he can’t read her expression. Nothing new there. She’d already been so much better at hiding her feelings than he could ever have dreamt of.

"Hopefully the roads will hold up the rest of the way there. When storms move in from the Atlantic, it can get nasty."

He’s hiding and he knows it, but as much as part of him screams at him to stop it, to act his age instead of the twelve year old that comes out whenever he thinks of Connecticut, he can’t bring himself to snap out of it. It’s been a rough couple of days, it’s about to get even worse, and as much as he wants to, he can’t quite resist the urge to play games with her.

"Okay, then. Though you know you'll have to tell me everything eventually. Based on the directions your mom sent to my phone, we'll be there in less than three hours."

"Just keep driving."

They'd be at the end of the road soon enough and all he could do in the meantime was watch the scenery go by.

***

Three hours later, the ache was still there, behind his eyes and around his heart. He'd broken it, that fragile thing they had, broken it badly, hurt her. On top of everything he'd done, everything he'd fucked up, with his family, with everything, joining Snoke, hurting them, he'd messed up the one thing he'd found he actually needed.

And after all that, after everything, he'd ended up right back where he'd started.

In a car, driving to Luke Skywalker's estate.

Fuck, he hated karma.

The way he'd worshiped his uncle when he was younger, the entire time he'd been growing up, actually, before it had all gone to shit. His childhood memories revolved around his parents and his uncles, Chewie and Lando, and of course Luke. The way he'd looked up to his mom’s twin brother as the epitome of everything that was right and moral and strong in the world. Whenever he'd fought with Han, whenever he'd been fed up with his mother's insistence on doing everything right or proper, the endless lectures on putting everyone's needs first, there he'd always been, his favourite uncle, to provide a welcoming ear and a safe space to vent.

He couldn't even think of those memories now without wanting to scream.

Those idiots on the internet who screamed this movie or that movie or that fandom or that fandom had ruined their childhood - they had no idea. He could tell them about tainted childhoods. He could no longer think back on those days when he'd been younger without thinking about how everything his uncle had said or did or anytime he'd told him he cared for him or his dreams or his ideas or wanted the best for him -

He'd lied. 

The final section of the drive to Skywalker Manor lay down a long dirt road, the turn-off from the interstate almost hidden by the vegetation, grown over and choked with weeds. He wasn’t really surprised, Luke had never been the most social of people, trusting instead to a small group of family and friends, the boundary of which had blurred over the years. With no reason to go outside that group anymore, he wouldn’t be surprised if Luke had cut down his circle of acquaintances to the bare minimum.

As Rey pulled into the graveled driveway in front of the house now, he wondered when his parents had been here last. His mother had never warmed to this house, and Han, well, Han had always been rather Han about it; the Skywalker legacy, the house, everything it represented. It had always been the people that his father connected to, not causes. Not legacy.

Before everything had gone to shit, during those last few years, Ben had started to wonder if he shouldn’t ask his father his perspective on all of it, Anakin, Padme, Luke. His mother’s connections to all of it. At the time he’d started to wonder if, now that he was older, his father might be more willing to let his guarded tongue spill a few family secrets from the perspective of an outsider.

But then, of course, it had all gone to shit before Ben could figure out how to loosen his father’s tongue.

He wondered idly if it were too late, now.

Assuming, of course, that they’d find a way through this nightmare.

Glancing over at Rey, he acknowledged what he’d only started to wonder. He was here for her, to clean up this mess, to make up, in some practical, tangible way, for dragging her into this disastrous web of Skywalkers and Organas and Solos and Snokes. For entangling her in the family drama he’d been born into and could therefore never escape, not fully.

He wondered idly, again, if it were too late, now,

For her to see him as something other than the fucked up legacy child born with too many strings attached.

He wondered if it were too late, if he’d messed it up too badly, or if she might like to try.

Wondered if she might take a chance.

***

They’d stopped for gas shortly before they turned off, and Rey could smell the salt air once they opened their car doors. She let it blow through her hair, revelling in the way it moved through her hair and caressed her neck, blowing away the lingering taint of the city and the tension of the last few days. Stretching to her full height, extending her arms all the way over her head and rotating her neck with her eyes closed, relaxing after the drive, letting the stress roll off her body in waves. If anything, the tension had continued to build during the drive, and she’d been glad to let some of it dissipate under the strength of the rolling sea air. 

Now, as she pulled into the gravel drive of the overgrown house at the end of Leia’s directions, she took another moment, assessing her 'friend's' ancestral home. Knowing Leia, knowing Han, knowing Ben most of all, it wasn't at all what she'd expected during their long drive up.

'I thought your mother said it was a cottage.'

He smiled, that small one that wouldn’t have touched his eyes even if she could see them, and she tried not to get distracted. She’d always like the way he looked when he smiled, the dimples peeking out of his cheeks and showing the flash of crooked teeth, and as the sea breezes teased his longish raven hair now, curling it a little with the humidity, she had to remind herself why they’d come here. That she couldn’t simply curl up with him in a local cottage by the seashore. That he wasn’t hers to keep.

_At least, maybe not yet._

'Yeah, well, my family's always been a little loose with labels.'

 _Clearly_ , she thought, snapping her focus back to the house. It was a trait she’d seen with rich people, those who were truly, unquestionably rich. The ones who referred to their lifestyles as _comfortable_. The ones whose money ran back generations and who couldn’t conceive of it being any other way. They understated, she’d learnt, underplayed their wealth, more for their own comfort than anyone else’s. Leia may not have grown up with extreme wealth, based on what she’d told her, but there had always been the understanding of it, she imagined. How much that had passed down to Ben, she’d only the faintest idea, though with Han around...

Anyway, based on this house, she imagined the impression of generational wealth had never been far from them, growing up. It was truly impressive.

'Uh, yeah,' she said quietly, looking up at it.

 _Apparently_.

'I take it my mother filled you in on our “complicated” family history. My grandparents. The Organas. My uncle.'

'Kinda.'

 _Somewhat_.

Apparently not enough, looking at the house in front of her. If it even be classified as a house. She personally would have called it a manor, it's classical lines and faded wooden shutters standing out against the winter forest scape, standing alone between the sea and rocky granite shore. Well-kept and large, rambling, even, she could see the age in the lines, even as she could see the care put into it and the cost its upkeep would require. She could only imagine what it would have been like to have grown up around a house of this nature.

'How big is this house?' she wondered.

_And how old?_

'Twelve bedrooms, 8 baths,' Ben answered absently, looking out on the see, his eyes hidden by his sunglasses even in the low winter light. 'It was built in the 1870s and modernized first by my grandfather in the 1930s and then by my uncle in the 1970s while he was using the house for his academy.'

 _Holy shit-_ Rey thought in shock, even as they were interrupted by a voice that seemed strangely familiar, even from a distance.

'I closed up most of the rooms, don't get much call for them anymore.'

Rey turned to find an older man standing on the wrap-around porch, wrapped in a heavy winter coat but with house slippers on his feet. He seemed to be in his sixties, the same age as Leia probably, though it looked as though he'd aged nowhere near as well. His greying hair and beard, blowing in the winter sea breeze, wasn't unkempt, exactly, just a little longer and stragglier than she would have expected, given how meticulously Leia and Ben, and Han for that matter, were always groomed.

Unsure of what to expect, she turned again to watch as Ben walked slowly but resolutely up the short flight of stairs to walk across the short porch to stand in front of the man standing there. He towered over him, his overly large frame and his hair, jet-black in this light, contrasting with the features of the older Skywalker. Their skin was equally as pale, though, even if Luke Skywalker's skin was weathered, by sun and sea, she imagined. 

'Ben.'

For once she couldn’t read his expression if you’d paid her.

'Luke.' 


	15. I've Got No Soul To Sell

Luke Skywalker's eyes were blue. Sea-on-the-edge-of-a-storm blue.

It threw Rey every time she happened to catch his gaze. She couldn't help but stare.

Blue. Pale, washed-out, faded denim, blue. It was disconcerting. It was more than that, it was – to be honest, she couldn’t quite explain it, how much it had thrown her, to look into his eyes and see the way the light faded into the insipid azure colour.

She knew he and Leia weren't identical siblings, obviously, so it wasn’t as if she’d expected them to look all that much the same, realistically they didn’t have to resemble each other any more than non-twin siblings, but still. It was disconcerting.

Luke’s eyes were so blue it was like a slap in the face every time she looked at him. She couldn’t help but be shook.

Looking at Ben, now, she lost herself a little in the reassuring amber-coloured warmth of his eyes. They which were so much like his fathers, even if they shifted more in colour than Han’s did, the dark brown irises shifting into a ring of rich brown and then fading to a light amber at the edges. His mother's eyes were a richer, deeper brown, but the shape was the same. The expressiveness was the same too, especially now, as, even as he struggled to reign his emotions in, the strain of being here, with his uncle. She could see it, the strain that was so visible it was almost physical from the way sat awkwardly in his chair, his large hands clenched together in a tight grip that she longed to break with her hands on his.

She tried not to stare, hoping to give him privacy, but the more she looked away from Luke Skywalker, the more she couldn't help but look at Ben, and she wasn't sure how long she could keep doing that without touching him and not cry.

Deciding to stare into her cup of lukewarm instant coffee she cradled in her hands instead, she tried to ignore how the emotional strain of the last few days hit her with the impact of Mack truck. She was exhausted. If she thought for one moment that she could trust the two men seated at the overly small kitchen table alone for a single instant, she would cry off from the conversation she felt hurdling towards them and head instead to bed for a mid-afternoon nap. If she knew where the bedrooms were. If she knew where they were sleeping today –

She grimaced into her coffee cup wryly. She had assumed they would stay with Ben’s uncle, as strained as Leia and Ben had hinted the relationship was. Despite everything, she’d assumed - well, Luke was Leia’s twin. She’d assumed they’d stay with him. Glancing discreetly at her companion (?), though -

‘Is there a hotel around here?’

She’d have to call for reservations. Assuming they had room. Hopefully. She hadn’t seen much in terms of hotel/motels on the way in, and she really wasn’t looking forward to driving any further today, but there might be something within a short drive. It was only mid-afternoon, and still, she would do anything to lie down on the rigid, tiny sofa she can see sitting in the front room.

‘You’ll stay here tonight.’

‘I’m not sure that’s the best – ’

‘One night,’ Ben cut in, and she knew, looking at him, that if he weren’t so exhausted, the strain showing through his pale features even more than they had on the drive here, that he wouldn’t have made even that concession.

‘One night,’ she agreed cautiously, looking from Ben to his uncle before continuing slowly. ‘In that case, it might be a good idea if _we_ -’

\- looking at Ben - 

‘- got some sleep. We didn’t really get a lot last night, what, with, everything.’

Lord knows she’d been tempted, watching him sleep in her bed, his large frame unsurprisingly making it look small with all six foot three of him crammed into it, just to crawl right in. He’d almost looked younger now, as exhausted as he was, his tired eyes almost lidded over and the bags showing under his eyes and making craters of his normally clear skin, almost transparent with exhaustion. Last night she’d been forcefully reminded of a small child looking for comfort, as she’d tucked her pitifully inadequate covers closer around his massive shoulders, trying to keep him warm, before leaving to curling into her solitary Muskoka chair to keep watch while she waited for the right time to wake his parents.

She didn’t tell him any of that today, now, any more than she tells him how little sleep she’d gotten last night, simply follows his uncle upstairs, up the massive, sturdy stairs, varnished to a deep mahogany to the second floor of the house, down the narrow old-fashioned hallway to the bedrooms. She hadn’t been sure, exactly, what Leia had told him regarding them, her and Ben, and their sleeping arrangements, and she hadn’t thought to ask her, but she feels a pang now as Luke shoos Ben into the first bedroom and she feels the warmth at her back dissipate in the air as he moves out from behind her. He fits through the door frame of the old house, barely, without slouching, and despite everything, she can’t quite quiet the voice in the back of her head screaming at her to follow him in.

The bedroom next over, the one that Luke ushers her into, is obviously well-cared for as with the entire house, despite the fact that it’s chillier than the kitchen downstairs, probably due to the massive doors at the end of the room that seem to have the potential to open up to the house’s terrace that overlooks the Atlantic Ocean. The view she caught a glimpse of, through those massive doors, was a winter wonderland, all silvers and whites and blues, with the Atlantic Ocean gleaming in the distance as the bright winter sun shines in the distance in that tiny moment of daylight that lingered before the winter twilight arrived. At any other time, she would linger, in front of those doors, to enjoy that frankly spectacular view, but at the moment all she cares about is the massive antique four-poster bed set off to the side of the room. Exhausted, mentally, physically and emotionally, she can't wait to slip under the covers of that big bed and sleep for a week. 

‘You have to share a bathroom,’ Luke grumbles, and then he’s gone, and she breathes a sigh of relief. Digging into her overnight bag for her toothbrush – she can’t wait to crash - she’s about to go in search of this mythical bathroom when she hears a slight sound and looks around.

_Oh,_ she thinks _, I thought he meant down the hall._

There’s a bathroom to share, true enough, but while she’d assumed Luke had meant there was a shared bathroom on this level, what Luke had actually meant was that there was a shared bathroom that connected the two rooms, hers and Ben’s. When all the doors are open, as they are now, one could look from her room through the Jack-and-Jill style bathroom and into the other bedroom. They are open, so she does, seeing Ben, his shoes already off, halfway into the bathroom in question when he notices her staring at him and freezes.

She smiles, suddenly, relieved by the normalcy of the moment, before waving her toothbrush at him. What looks like the beginning of his familiar smirk ghost on the edges of his mouth as he waves his hand at her in return, which apparently holds the toothbrush of his own that they’d bought earlier that day.

And then it’s almost as it had been, with the two of them standing side-by-side in a bare bathroom neither of them lives in, surrounded by towels that don’t belong to them and little else, brushing their respective mouths and she shies, a little, at what this means. She tucks this little moment away in her heart as they move back into their respective rooms, as she shuts the door of the bathroom behind her and crawls under the covers of the massive four-poster bed in the centre of the room, shucking her clothes other than her t-shirt and leaving them scattered on the floor near where she’d climbed in. She’s not asleep before her head hits the pillow, but it’s close. Her last thought as she falls asleep is confused and, yet, not.

_We should have bought him some slippers._

***

It’s almost dark when she wakes, the twilight losing its attempt to cling to the light that remains.

The chill from the room earlier has intensified – apparently, the house is too old to be energy efficient and/or Luke doesn’t believe in central heating, though she can’t blame him for not heating rooms he doesn’t use – and she shivers as throws her clothes back on before she hops across the cold floor, her feet barely touching the freezing hardwood on the way back to the shared bathroom. The door to Ben’s room is open, and she can tell by the stillness that he’s not there even before she peaks in. The bed’s either perfectly made or it hasn’t been slept in, and she hopes it’s the first, hopes he managed to get at least some sleep, even as the pit in her stomach reminds her that she’s had a bad feeling about this visit since they’d left the city early this morning, as she drove for hours with a tumbler of coffee in the holder next to her slowly getting emptied while an exhausted Ben slumbered, crammed awkwardly and snored softly, in the passenger seat.

The chill that emanates from the big windows and buries into her doesn’t go away, even as she leaves the bedroom she'd been assigned and retraces her steps from earlier in the day, down the hallway and down the sturdy stairs and right by the kitchen and out the main door. It’s one of those chills that stays with you, and she shivers, feeling the chill in her bones even when she grabs her jacket and even as she jams her feet into her old winter boots, not bothering to do up the laces as she goes outside.

She’s surprised to see Luke standing there already. She’s even more surprised to see Ben striding up from the path that Luke had told her led directly to the lake. She’s engrossed in shivers that have taken over her entire body by this point, despite the boots and her jacket, and she’s only been outside for less than 5 minutes. Ben, in his dress shoes and light overcoat, should be freezing, though he looks mostly the same as she’d left him, the red tip of his striking nose and the red blush that stains his high cheekbones under his eyes the only indication that he’d been outside longer than a minute.

She’s seconds from raising her hand to signal him when Luke, who still hasn’t noticed her, interjects, jabbing at his nephew.

‘You need to stop taking your anger at me out on your mother.’

She frowns – Ben has never been anything but civil to his mother as far as she’s ever seen, though truth be told, she’s only seen them together from a distance and even though she knows Leia longs for more contact – but keeps her mouth shut, knowing instinctively that _this_ , _this_ right here, is the reason the two of them came all the way here the moment they'd awoken.

‘Mom’s never had trouble fighting her own battles, Uncle Luke.’

Now this tone of Ben's, silky and dangerous, this tone she knows, and when she shivers at the way it sounds as she watches from afar as Ben looks at his uncle like he's from a toxic species, it isn’t from the cold.

_Patience, Rey_ , she reminds herself, even as every nerve in her body screams at her to step in. She needs to know what’s going on here, she knows it, instinctively, and she knows stepping in now will break up this fight that she somehow feels has to happen.

Luke snorts. ‘You don’t think I know that better than you?’

Even from where she’s standing, Rey can see Ben’s mouth twist – _wait, Han does that_ – as he glares at his uncle.

‘Shocker, it took you less than three minutes to bring up the war. Tell me more, Uncle Luke, about how the three of us fought the good fight to stop the Evil Empire. Tell me again, Uncle Luke, about how my generation, and particularly _me_ , has no idea of what it’s like to fight for something we believe in.’

‘You have no idea what it was like –’

‘Yes, I know, I know, I’ve never had to fight for anything my entire life. I have no idea what’s it like to sacrifice everything for the Cause.’

‘Listen, you – I can’t believe, after everything we did, everything we fought for, to bring peace, to help the peoples of the former Soviet Union, you sold your soul to the Man. To fucking Snoke of all people. The epitome of the military-industrial complex, the fucking ‘Merchant of Death’-’

‘Yeah, and whose fault was that? It’s not like they were lining up to hire me after what you did-’

‘I’m sorry that got leaked, it was supposed to be a private memo, just to show you how serious I was about it. It was meant to teach you a lesson, and instead, you used it as an excuse to go to work for that piece of shit.’

‘Yeah, he’s a piece of shit, but – '

Luke’s voice is getting louder now, and Rey’s not sure if he realizes that he’s almost yelling.

‘Don’t tell me you’re going to defend Snoke after the shit Leia told me he pulled on you. On Rey.’

‘ _Don’t fucking mention her. Don’t you dare bring her into this._ ’ Ben hisses. ‘You think I don't wish I could go back and make sure I didn't touch her and instead kept her from him for every moment? I'll regret that for the rest of my _fucking_ life. I’ll regret every moment, everything I did for him, for bringing him into her life, for the rest of my _fucking_ life. For what he did to her. What I _helped_ him do – whether I knew what I was doing or not. But you can’t tell me you haven’t fucked up. It’s not like Dad’s running a non-profit collective, right? Solo International is one of the biggest corporations in North America and you can’t tell me he hasn’t gotten his hands dirty from time to time. Don’t tell me the Skywalker Foundation hasn’t benefitted from his connections, legal and otherwise.’

It was all, happening so fast, they were yelling at each other, jumping from grievance so fast, she couldn't keep up, couldn't put it all together.

Skywalker. Why does that name seem so - ? 

Skywalker. 

Luke Skywalker. The Skywalker Foundation. She’d hadn’t realized or maybe she’d forgotten, until that moment, the way that the philanthropic arm of Solo International operated through the foundation named after Leia’s biological family. That the said philanthropic arm operated through the foundation that had Luke at its head. It had been in the review of the foundational corporation documents she’d gone through her first week with Han, the week she’d gone early after the disastrous blowup with Ben, but she hadn’t put it together. She’d forgotten, even after Leia had told her the story, this morning, that Ben had Skywalker in his name, same as Luke.

So, if Luke was the Skywalker Foundation, given the connection to Solo International, and given how strained his relationship to his nephew clearly was, that meant… She was putting the pieces together fast and furious, now. It had been the Luke connection he’d objected to this entire time, when it came to his objection to her working for his father. When it came to her working for Solo International. 

While she’d been busy putting it all together, the argument had escalated, their yelling getting louder even as their breath hung in the air in the frigid temperatures.

‘We were doing, everything we’ve done, everything has been for the greater good. Why can’t you see that?’

‘Greater good, my ass.’

‘Ben.’

They both turned to stare at her, startled out of their argument, which looked like it was about to disintegrate into name-calling and not much else. She was still freezing, though it didn’t seem either of them noticed the cold. All the same, she knew that she had to get them to air it all out. Every grievance, every secret. And she knew, finally, why they, her and Ben, were really here. Knew she'd have to get them, Ben and Luke, to admit it.

Sunshine. The best disinfectant, she'd once heard someone say. 

Whatever it was, this history between them, needed to be aired out, brought out into the light of day. It was maybe the only way they could move beyond it; or at least move beyond it enough to purge this history of its power.

In the meantime, she had to know.

‘What, exactly, is this fight about? Really? Why, _exactly_ , did Leia send us here?’

_What aren’t you telling me?_

Ben was already bounding up the terrace steps, trying to usher her back inside, his hands in hers. 

‘Rey, we’ll talk about it inside. You’re shivering.’

She couldn’t feel the cold anymore, though, focused on the men in front of her and all she needed them to do, all she needed to demand they tell her.

‘Ben.’

‘Rey, your hands are like ice, we have to take you inside. I swear; I’ll tell you everything.’

She still stock-still, though, determined.

‘What letter? What did you do?’ she yelled, staring at Luke.

Leia had tried to tell her, she was sure, something about her brother, something about her brother’s inflexibility and unflinching moral certainty.

‘Rey, I’ve only wanted the best for Ben,’ he turned to Ben, seemingly imploring him, ‘you had to know that, that just like your parents, your whole family, we just wanted to help you be the best you could be.’

‘Luke. What. Did. You. Do. To. Ben.’

How did they end up here? She was sure, somehow, that it had all started here. Ben, his relationship with his parents, his job with Snoke, Snoke’s violation of her and Ben, everything.

‘The. Fuck. Did. You. DO?’

Ben’s voice was the softest she’d ever heard him. As if he had something to be ashamed for, not Luke.

‘He tried to have me disbarred. Two months after I passed the Bar. For moral turpitude.’

She’s not sure, anymore, if the shivers that course through her, taking over her entire form, are from cold or from rage. Dimly, a cold objective voice in the back of her lizard brain tells her it’s the latter. She’s barely paying attention, though, as she lunges at the old man standing before her on this isolated estate on the Atlantic coast, longing only, in that moment, to get her hands around his neck and her knee at his balls.

She hears the both of them, Ben and Luke, yelling at her, feels as Ben wraps his long arms around her to try to hold her back, but she hears nothing, feels nothing, except the primal urge to get at her target. She’s fighting him, Ben, the adrenaline coursing through her veins as he struggles, even with his advantages in size and height, to keep her from getting at his uncle.

‘You,’ she screams at Luke, unable to believe it even as Ben has to hoist her off her feet, his arms around her, biceps flexing, using every bit of his strength to keep control of her. ‘You – ’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A reminder that I'm not a lawyer, but hopefully this kinda makes sense....


	16. An Intricate Tango

He’s almost feral with need when she comes to him that night. She can see it, in how dark his eyes as he looks at her, as she watches the way his lips press even tighter together than she could have imagined, as he looks at her, almost afraid. She can see it in the way he stands so still, holding himself so quiet across the motel room they'd finally check into, his arms crossed firmly across his chest as if it to keep him from reaching out. To keep him from shattering. 

She can tell from the way his hand clenches from time to time when he thinks she won't notice.

She can tell from the way he’s careful to keep the length of the room between them. 

As cold as the night had been as she'd run the short length of the parking lot from her room to his, as cold as it is this room, with all the drafts seeping through the cheap walls, she's colder, now, without him touching her.

It’s cheap, this motel room, the lack of care showing in the threadbare curtains and the see-through sheets and the way she can smell the cigarette smoke from outside even through the walls. The teenagers she’d walked past on the way in had been smoking in the cold night air, defiant in the way they'd looked at her, the frost making the smoke as trails through the air, and the smell makes it through the cheap, thin walls and makes her think of regret and brittleness. Of how she’d been so determined to give the world the middle finger at that age; make everyone she knew stare at her in awe. It seems like a lifetime ago.

It seems like yesterday. 

They’d driven over an hour to get here, her and Ben, and had then pulled over at the first motel they’d seen, even if they’d been able to tell it was a shithole even from the highway. It had been a haze, those last twenty minutes on the Skywalker estate, as she’d thrown her few items into her overnight bag, grabbed Ben’s cloth shopping bag where he’d left it, crumbled and seemingly untouched, to the side just inside of his bedroom door. He hadn’t bought much, anyway, during their quick stop for necessities at a big box store on their way there, and hadn’t bothered to 'unpack' it in any case, so she'd only to grab the toothbrush that had sat on the countertop of the Jack-and-Jill bathroom next to where her own had waited. She’d thrown it, and the bag, into her backpack, as she’d strode out of the house, struggling the entire time not to trip on the laces of her boots that she still hadn’t managed to tie. 

They’d been in the car driving off, five minutes from the house, as Ben had steered their way back to the highway and she’d stared out into the storm, before she'd managed to control how she vibrated with rage.

_He’d tried to have him fucking disbarred._

For fucking "moral turpitude".

Though what exactly that meant, Rey had no idea, and the vague memory of Luke saying something about 'signs' and 'impatience' and 'temper' had left her with the impression that he'd been more afraid of what Ben was capable of, rather than of anything specific he'd done. He kept banging on about 'an unsigned note' to the Harvard Law Review, but, frankly, the details had gone over Rey's head. 

Not that it mattered, in the end, what had precipitated Luke's actions, just the consequences. She couldn't imagine what it would have been like, to have your uncle and mentor do that to you, even if, as he'd said, it had been meant more as a warning than an actual threat.

Meanwhile, the part of her brain not incandescent in rage had focused on doing the math, taking the age she knew Ben was now, how long he'd been working for Snoke, the minimum requirements to train as a lawyer. The answer she'd come up with had shook her to the core. 

At the time of Luke's actions, Ben must have been all of 24 years old.

 _"You must have been a prodigy,"_ she’d mused, sitting there in the passenger seat of their rental car, staring at the snow as the road whizzed by them, and he’d said nothing, the twisting of his mouth in response perhaps passing for a smile if you didn’t know him. Maybe _she_ didn’t know him as well as she might, but she knew him well enough not to believe that the expression represented anything other than pain. 

_"I was advanced for my age academically_ ," was all he’d said, and given that by her calculations he’d graduated high school at 15, she imagined he had been. 

Apparently, Luke had apparently had no concerns about his education, only his intentions. Too tempted to take the easy path, was all he said. Too tempted by easy answers. Too driven by his pride and by his temper. Too spoiled by all the ways everything had all come so easily to him.

Rey, who at the point had relaxed marginally in Ben’s iron’s hold, had tried to lunge at him again in response, unable to resist; the man’s hangdog impression and sad eyes having had zero impact on her.

Jackass. 

He’d been so concerned about Ben’s vulnerabilities that he’d driven his nephew straight into Snoke’s arms.

 _"I thought it was just a coincidence_ ," Ben had told Rey, on their drive, determined as she was to go far enough to reach accommodation that didn’t have any association with the Skywalker name. _"I was in Boston meeting with an old colleague from law school, trying to drum up some leads after Luke’s draft letter calling me out had leaked_. _Though at this point, I don’t know, Rey, maybe it was Snoke's plan all along. That old colleague I met with? He's Armitage Hux’s cousin."_

 _I wonder which Snoke connection works in the Bar Association offices,_ Rey wondered absently, though she kept it to herself. Just because Luke hadn’t intended to have the letter published when he sent it – the Bar Association’s President, Wedge Antille, was an old friend, Luke had told her – didn’t mean it got leaked accidentally. 

_"Han and Leia?"_ Rey had asked, in the car, when they were safe, when they were alone, as she held her breath.

 _"I never told them_ ," he told her, looking everywhere but in her eyes. " _They kept asking, but I never told them, and eventually, they realized asking was just making it worse._ _I was too embarrassed. My entire life they’ve said that Luke is the most ethical person I know. How bad of a person do I have to be to have fucked up so bad he tried to end my law career before it even started?"_

Rey fumed silently, now, just remembering how his eyes had turned limpid in that moment, the shame showing in the soft brown. she can easily imagine how vulnerable he'd been, sitting in that bar with Armitage Hux's cousin. In one moment, he'd basically lost his entire family and the career he'd long dreamt of. No wonder he'd been easy pickings for Snoke. 

Fucking Luke.

It explained so much. No matter he was so edgy around his parents. No wonder they didn’t quite know what had gone wrong.

 _"You must know,"_ Rey had told him, almost desperate to get it through his thick skull, " _that no matter what Luke’s letter had said, that no matter what he’d implied you’d done, that it wasn’t something that you couldn’t work through, the three of you."_

They'd always been so determined, after all, she’d reminded him, to get him home.

Whatever it took, whatever hold they’d assumed Snoke had over him, she knew they’d always assumed that one day he’d come home to them. They’d told her as much. It turned out the hold Snoke had on him was a sense of gratitude and obligation, which for Ben, she imagined, would be stronger than almost any other kind. Ben would have done almost anything, for that small fraction of a man, after he’d scooped up a broken and vulnerable kid from that dive bar in downtown Boston. Would have done anything for him, because no matter how shit Snoke was as a person, Ben would always have been grateful for that moment, for reassuring him that he was more than the legacy kid he’d grown up as. Grateful for reminding him that, no matter what, he wasn’t alone.

It would have bonded Ben to him with strings of loyalty so real they would have been almost visible to the naked eye. 

It doesn't surprise her, therefore, that Ben had been prepared to let Snoke use him, use his knowledge, his drive, his loyalty, hell, his presence as an irritant to his parents, for as long as Snoke had thought it necessary. 

Until Rey. 

Until Snoke had decided, she realized, that she was too much of a threat, that she was too close to his parents. That she'd gotten too close to Ben. That Ben had been reminded, in her company, that people did actually give a shit about what happened to him.

Until Snoke had realized that the connection he’d set up as leverage, the footage that he'd obtained for any number of nefarious purposes, had proven to be evidence of Ben’s investment in someone other than his long-time mentor.

Until she's become the crack in the armour that Ben had built up to protect himself.

Snoke had overestimated, obviously, his hold over Ben. And underestimated the strength of Ben and Rey’s burgeoning connection to each other. It was clear to her now that Snoke had come to realize that he'd set in motion a chain of events whose outcome he’d been unable to control, had inadvertently managed to forced his young apprentice to choose between his loyalty to his mentor and his values. He’d brought them together, Ben and Rey, and then had to watch as Rey had burned it all - Ben's unquestioning loyalty to Snoke most of all - to the ground.

She had to believe it would have happened eventually, that Ben would have seen how Snoke was using him, would have rebelled, eventually, but certainly, the relationship they'd built almost despite themselves these past months seemed to have acted as the catalyst to spur him to action. Their connection was too strong, and this, along with his parents’ love - too determined to falter - made it unlikely he would have resisted much longer his determination not to look at his life and everything that working that devotedly for Snoke entailed. 

That afternoon, as Ben had driven them away from that estate, haunted by regrets more than ghosts, she'd been so focused on her thoughts she'd missed how the light changed as time passed. She'd been so determined to work it all out, Rey hadn’t realized she was holding Ben's hand until they’d been driving away from Luke’s for almost an hour. She never let it go, his hand, as they'd driven after that. Simply hadn't been able to let it go. Looking at him, as he drove, the emotional exhaustion, the fatigue that put dark circles under his pale skin that hadn’t been there before, hadn’t been there even last night, she knew they weren’t going to make it all the way home that day. So, as much as she longed for her bed and the comfort of D.C., she'd picked out the first motel she’d seen along the highway, unsurprised as he agreed without question. 

There was really no need for a second room, she’d tried to tell him, as they’d pulled into the lot, but she also wanted to make sure he’d had the option; to have his space, to yell into the void, to punch the pillows as hard as he wanted, hell, to punch the walls, if that was something he’d needed. So, she’d agreed with his quiet request for two rooms, dropped her overnight bag on the floor of her room, content to let him be, before sending a quick text update to Leia with their location, just in case. She’d lasted all of forty minutes, though, before making her way across the short parking lot to check on him, finding his room almost as if he had a homing beacon, almost as if he was the second half she’d never known she’d needed. 

As if he was home. 

Letting her in without question, almost before she'd opened her mouth to request entry, he'd looked as if he'd been hoping she'd come, even despite himself. Looking at him now, across the cheap bed with the ancient yellow, puce and burgundy coverlet that she was sure smelled like antiseptic and had to be stained with more things than she wanted to think about, she worried that her waiting even those forty minutes had been too long. He was too still, standing there, even as he almost vibrated with restraint, and too determined not to meet her eyes, too trapped in his own brain. It was too quiet in this room, the ancient, tiny tv sitting quiet and dead in the corner of the room where it was chained to the wall, his black ski jacket tossed over the cheap dresser and the single chair that had been pulled out the only indication of his presence. Not that he had sat in it, she imagined.

‘I can’t really blame you for leaving your shoes on,’ she said suddenly, looking down at his feet, still shod in the dress shoes he’d been wearing yesterday.

He was still wearing most of the clothes he’d worn to the office the day he’d shown up to find her, the only addition to his suit the light ski jacket they’d bought him at that big box store, her spare toothbrush tucked neatly into the massive pockets, snug and clean inside the travel case she’d given him. They’d picked up a few necessities for him in the twenty minutes they'd spent in that store, and during their time there he’d mainly followed her like a lost child, almost worried, it had seemed, that she would end up ditching her in the overly large, overly bright store like as if he was that lost teenager in the movie that had been popular the last year of her undergrad. He'd thrown a worried look at her when he'd gone to snag a three-pack of underwear and a set of PJs in the three minutes she’d stopped off in the winter section for the ski jacket, and other than that he hadn’t left her side until they’d parked the car at Luke’s. 

He looked just as lost now, just as vulnerable, and given what they’d just been through – what she’d just found out, about his uncle, about the past, about his family history, she could hardly blame him. Determined to break the tableau they seemed trapped in, she moved to sweep the coverlet off the bed – no way was she sitting on it – before moving to take a seat on the edge of the bed. She had to look up, up, up, into his haunted eyes, darker than their usual shade of light whiskey brown as he moved closer, but at least she no longer felt as if she were a predator hunting her prey.

‘I’m not sure when this carpet was last cleaned,' she said, reflectively, still thinking of his feet in his dress shoes and the way they stood out in this cheap room. 'This coverlet either, but as long as you don't touch much, you should be okay. Anyway, tomorrow, I’m hoping – ’ she started, cutting off abruptly as he moved to kneel at her feet.

She stared down at him, shocked, as he reached out gently to touch her, his hands as light as thistledown as they moved down her calf to undo the laces that held on her ancient winter boots, slipping them off and placing them at the side of the room one at a time before caressing the arches of her feet in an act of worship meant to warm her. He was so large, this gentle giant, and the room was so small, that he barely had to move as he did so, his long arms making short work of placing her boots neatly by the door. Her stockinged feet shivered in the cold as he pulled away, leaving her deprived of the warmth of his touch again, even as she longed to reach out to hold onto his shoulders.

‘Ben – ’ her lips were dry again, as was her mouth, and she wanted to nothing so more than to lean back, to close her eyes and as she begged him to keep touching her as gently as he was doing. to keep him there, with her until the end of time.

Still, she tried again. 

‘Ben – I’m hoping we’ll be home sometime early tomorrow morning, and I don’t think you should go – ’ ‘home’ wasn’t the right word, so she compromised ‘- back to the corporate apartment. We can grab your stuff, or at least enough for a few days, and then maybe you can stay at mine?’ 

Her place was tiny and she isn’t entirely sure they’d both fit, but it was better than the alternative, and she knew now, why he would be more comfortable at her place than at his parents, even though they had more room. Instead, she could make it work, him and her at her place, even if he had looked like he was at risk of banging his head on her ceilings more often than not. He'd - mostly - fit in her bed and she could sleep on the couch.

She didn't want him left alone.

She was afraid he'd shatter if she so much as reached out to touch him, and yet she also knew he clung to her presence.

He apparently still finds the stained worn carpet of the motel room fascinating, still refuses to meet her eyes as he squats at her feet, even after the boots are gone and her feet hang in her light stockings off the edge of the bed. 

‘Whatever you think best. You’re not required to take care of me, you know. I know this is not – What I mean is – you don't have to -’ 

Reaching down to cup his face in her hands – and oh, she’d somehow forgotten how massive he is, somehow, as he squats small at her feet – she rubs her thumbs gently along the length of his cheekbones, delighting in the beauty marks on his pale skin. She'd almost forgotten how soft the dark brown of his eyes can be in the low lights of hotel rooms, how large they look when she's this close to him. She'd had almost forgotten how they reveal every secret and spill out every vulnerability. At least when he looks at her from this angle, peers into her soul like this. 

‘You should get some rest,' she tells him, worried at the way he's looking at her like she's more celestial than real. 'At this point, you’re so pale I can almost see through you.’

‘Rey – ’

And he’s there, and he’s not listening, and she’s missed him so much, and his lips are still that luscious pale pink that she’d always wanted to nibble.

And it’s late, or maybe she's just tired, but she's not going anywhere. 

So, she throws caution to the wind as she leans in to press into those pouty pink lips. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed that as much as I enjoyed writing that. 
> 
> So, listen, the next update is written, but it is a lot, and will require the addition of many, smutty tags after I edit it. Still, never fear, dear reader, it's coming.


	17. Dancing in the Moonlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please check the NEW TAGS before proceeding.

He tastes like regret and cheap toothpaste, does Ben Solo, in that moment, as she kisses him in this cheap motel room, in so many ways a world away from where they’d last done this, and all she can think is _more_ , _more_ , _more_. The greed rips through her as she slants her lips over his over and again, drinking deep even as no part of them meet except for where they're joined at the mouth, his perfect plush mouth just begging her to take everything.

And all she can think is how she'll take it all.

Like she’ll never get enough of it that taste of his lips, like she’ll never get enough of the way he worships her own, following her lead as she slants her mouth over his, as she enjoys having him sit at her feet for one sweet moment. It gives her the perfect position to take him at her will, him kneeling at her feet as she sits on the edge of this saggy old bed in this dingey, dark, dank room in a rundown no-name inn at the side of the interstate and she wants _more, more, more_.

Or, maybe it’s him she’ll never get enough of, like this, as he lets her take the lead, seemingly content to let her ravish his lips with her own, rather than sliding his long fingers into her hair to tilt her scalp to his liking, rather than reaching over to caress her collarbone with the edge of his thumb as he’s done so many times in the past.

Maybe that it’s him, as he’s happy, seemingly, in that moment, to let her kiss him, again and again, at her pleasure, letting her dart her tongue in to play with his, rub against it, nibble at his lips, slant hers for maximum effect, as he gives back everything he gets, but still seems perfectly content to grant her total control.

It’s lovely, and wonderful, and sweet, and a part of her hates that she wants him to ruin her. Wants to ruin him in return. Want to turn him into a panting, sweaty mess, wants to leave her imprint on him so clear that people would be able to tell as he walks down the street. Imprint him so deeply that he might as well be wearing a sign that proclaims “Property of Rey Johnson”. Worm herself so deeply into his heart that he’ll never think of getting her out, no matter what happens, no matter how he tries.

‘Ben,’ she says as she tears her lips free and puts her hand lightly on his chest, preparing to pause him in his efforts long enough to tell him what she wants. What she needs.

He’s startled, though, jumps back as if her very touch, gentle as it was, burnt him, and as he half falls back onto his haunches, barely keeping his balance, looking up at her with those fathomless eyes, dark in the low light of the room. And she remembers again, how he’d looked at her as she’d walked in, like he was almost feral, like he was lost. Like he'd found a safe harbour and he wanted only to take advantage of it while he still could.

Smiling gently, still looking down into the face she’d come to love, she reaches down to cup his sharp features, play with the dimples she can only see an echo of before reaching to shimmy her jeans down her hips and down the length of her legs, taking her socks with them. Satisfied, she sits back down on the bed, her oversized university hoodie coming barely to her hips, dressed from the waist down only in her ancient faded cotton underwear. It’s not sexy, any more than the process had been. It can’t be, not with the jeggings that always look awkward going on or coming off and the ancient socks she’ been wearing, the ones with the holes in the toe and the funky patterns, but then, it’s not meant to be sexy. It’s just meant to get her there.

The entire time he stares, as she wiggles and shakes to get herself free from the tight denim, as she manages to pull the stretchy material off her ankles, and as she shivers in the room, which could politely be called insulated, though only with a very loose interpretation of the state's Building Code. He doesn’t move, as she shimmies and shakes and gets herself free, as she sits on that ancient bed in nothing but her underwear and her old faded hoodie, doesn’t reach out, not at all, not to caress or to grope or to help or to stroke the way she needs. Doesn’t touch her all, just carefully keeps his distance and _watches_ with those eyes that burn. 

And, oh, it makes her blood rush though, makes her skin tingle and the flesh burn as his gaze crawls against her skin with the way he looks at her, the hunger in his eyes and the heat in the way his irises dilate. As he doesn’t take his eyes off of her, not blinking the entire time, simply staring, as if he could swallow her up with his eyes alone.

But though it warms her, the desperate hungry way he looks at her, half-dressed in ancient grubby clothes on the bed, she wants, she _needs_ more. Reaching down to capture his lips again, she’s almost begging, in turn –

_Come back to me. Stay with me._

_Be with me._

Taking his hands with hers, she maneuvers one into her hair even as her other uses his remaining hand to caress the length of her thigh, the heat of his palm and the glide of his skin on hers everything she remembers. Everything she wants. Leaving his hands there, where she’s placed them, she’s free, to slide her own where she wants them, sliding into the soft silk of his dark hair and her other across his chest and down the length of his core, toying with the buttons of his shirt as she goes, content with the knowledge they’ll soon slide free from the matching holes under her fingers. Knowing that she’ll soon have access to what she wants, to the hard muscles and the velvet of his skin that covers it. Content with the knowledge that he’ll soon give her everything she needs. 

His hands don’t linger long, where she’d placed them, the one buried in her hair moving sharply to tilt her skull, just the way she likes it, the one on her hip shifting to pull her closer to him, burning in its wake and caressing the crease where the upper thigh meets the top of her leg on the way to her core, and she sighs into his mouth, waiting. Wanting. He slips his way past where she wants his magic fingers, though, shifting his palm along the length down her leg, caressing as he goes but seemingly deliberate in missing where she wants him to stroke the most. Her underwear stays in place, even as her body heats beneath it, and she would curse in frustration except for the gentle way that his hands slide as they make their way down to her feet, almost as if to reassure her that he won’t leave her hanging for long.

Indeed, as his hand reaches her ankle, its counterpart soon joins it, even as he starts kissing the inside of her leg, his lips burning imprints with its gentle pressure, as he seemingly tries to kiss every nerve point on his way back up to her core. She can’t take it, it’s too much, this gentle assault, and her head falls back even as she silently begs his lips to move closer, closer, closer to where she wants them.

They’ve done this before, or rather, he has, has kissed his way up every inch of her leg and over, into, on every part of her core, where she waits, dripping, for him. She knows he’s good at it, eating her out, knows he enjoys it and takes pride in it, knows, because he’s told her, over and over, as he caresses her with his tongue, that he has visions of tying her hands to the bedposts and make her come again and again with his _mouth_ , with _only_ his mouth - his lips and his mouth and his tongue. She knows how much he loves fucking her with his mouth.

And she’s so greedy now, immediately, waiting for him to show off his skill with his tongue in her cunt, even as he slowly, slowly moves up her leg, driving her to distraction. She leans back on her elbows, not taking her eyes of him as he moves up towards his goal, cursing him under her breath, muttering dirty words she’s not even sure he hears, in retribution for the way he tortures her. For the way he denies her that which belongs to her. He looks up, seemingly hearing the way she’s moments out from urging him more forcefully to where she wants the sweet pleasure of his lips and mouth and tongue, teeth even, with his nose on her clit, but she loses her train of thought in that moment.

It’s missing, that trademark cocky crook of the lips he’d always worn when he tormented her like this in the past, his eyes now burning into hers instead with an intensity which could almost scare her if she wasn’t so safe in his gaze. He doesn’t meet her eyes with his for long, though, and she’s seconds from reaching out to slide her hands into his hair to force him to look at her once again, when his clever fingers slide straight past the elastic of her underwear and into her cunt, the shock and delight she feels in response forcing her back off the bed as she arches back, bowing back in pleasure.

‘Fuck.’

It barely takes the edge off, so she does it again, panting out the word.

‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Ben – I need you to, Fuck. I need you, yes, right there – _fuck_ me.’

She’s so wet and ready somehow, already, likely from anticipation, and the tension in the room is killing her, and it just takes a second for him to slide his fingers in, since he knows exactly how to use her body like a well-tuned machine. And then he’s fucking her with his fingers and his thumb, rolling expert circles on her clit with the exact pressure she needs, and before long she’s finding it difficult to concentrate on anything other than her breathing and the way his fingers fill her, stretching her almost to the point of pain, their presence a welcome one, allowing her to clench on _something_ the way she needs.

And then she can’t think about anything, as she’s coming, and coming and coming, and her entire body flushes in response as she shatters with a groan, her back bowed all the way back into the bed, her thighs trembling around him, the soft noises of them both echoing around them.

She comes down, panting, warm and flushed, and forces herself back up on her elbows to look at him once again, expecting to see the warm response on his face, the warmth in his eyes and the pleasure in his smile, the approbation that he’s always showered her with after he's done this before, disappointed to see instead how he hides his gaze from her, his lips still firmly, if gently, on the skin of her legs, his eyes resolutely downcast as he brushes the soft skin of his lips and his hands against her.

And it’s amazing, and he’s amazing, and she feels amazing, and yet she can’t put her finger on it, exactly, why she feels he’s hiding from her. Can't figure why, even with her still impaled on his long fingers, she feels he's hiding his gaze from her, as if worried his eyes would give away everything should she capture them with her own.

Struggling to focus, she tries again, reaching down to grab his face in her hands, wanting to gain his gaze, yes, but also wanting his lips on hers – why haven’t they always been on hers, why is he not touching her the way he should, why is he not inhaling her in shuddering gulps as he knows she loves – and she’s suddenly cold without his lips to warm her own, as the shiver that moves through her having nothing to do with the room’s drafts.

She says his name again –

‘Ben-’

\- but as responsive as he is to her body, that’s how determined he is, seemingly, to ignore her need for him to answer the unspoken questions she asks. Determined, in response, to make him answer, she’s reaching out again, this time more firmly, when he returns to his ministrations, seemingly determined to kiss every inch of the crease of her hip where it leads to her core, at the same time sliding down the skimpy thong that remains as the only thing covering her lower half, scanty as it is, already damp and warm from the heat of her body. She’s weak, and before she can fully decide to stop him, to pause long enough to make him answer the questions increasingly shouting in her head, the thong is already sliding down her hips, before he shucks it competently down her legs and discards it by her feet before she fully realizes it, her brain as it is still fuzzy from pleasure.

Then, as she struggles to focus, his entire head is there, buried in her core, and there’s a moment, clear as day and soft as the moon, as he just rests there, arms wrapped around her, hands cupping her ass in support as much as in lust, when he seemingly takes a moment to breathe her in. They rest there, in the calm, in the peace, and though it should be hot, with his face buried in her and his lips inches from her core, and though it is, there’s also a moment of pure comfort, as he seems to take relief with his face in the crease of her thighs and in the smell of her skin. She slides her hands through his hair, taking a moment of comfort and peace in return, as she sits and looks down at this generous, vulnerable man as he gently wraps himself in her body as he would a blanket.

As she breaks the moment, she takes his face by his glorious cheekbones as she insists he face her, gets her eyes on his, and she does, and she feels her heart crack a little, looking down into his dark eyes. They’d always been warm and liquid, in these moments, his amber-toned eyes, and now, looking at him, she sees instead the darkest of gazes, and she’s reminded, again of how she’d found him tonight walking into this room.

Her first thought about the way he’d looked at her.

_Almost feral with need._

And she hears it, now, with every kiss with which he gifts her, just as she realizes the way he’d been saying it all along, the moment he’d touched her, with every kiss, every caress he’d pressed into every inch of her skin that he’d touched.

_I’m sorry._

The way his hand gentles as it makes its way slowly up her body, under her hoodie, pushing it up with the heft of his arm and wrist even as it traces its way north with the softest of pressure to claim her breast, cupping her nipple in his palm and warming it even as it pebbles under his grasp.

_So sorry._

The gentlest of kisses on her thigh, the gentlest of touches on the hip of her other leg, even as he pays attention to the first.

_Sorry._

Another, kiss, this one just edging her core. Pressing open her thighs enough to get his shoulders in, to reach her core with his mouth, as he presses down, ever so gently, on her torso, trying to get her to relax under his touch, enjoy his ministrations, not worry about anything but her own pleasure. Urging her to lay down, relax, let him worship her with his hands and his mouth, apologize with his lips even if he's not using words.

She can’t help but hear it now, with every kiss.

As his mouth presses into her thigh and up into her cunt.

_So sorry._

Nibbling at her outer lips.

_Forgive me._

Pressing the edges of them apart to find her clit.

_Forgive me._

The gentlest of touches by those glorious, plump lips tracing every bit of it, before latching on.

As much as she wants to concentrate on the pleasure he’s giving her, as much as she wants to think of nothing other than what he’s doing - with his generous mouth and adept tongue, with his tongue buried in the thatch of hair just above - that’s as much as she needs him to listen to her, _needs_ him to tell her, exactly what this is.

Why every kiss feels like an apology and every caress feels like goodbye.

It catches her by surprise then, the way she’s screaming his name before she knows it, screaming it before she realizes how close she was, to the edge, even as she’s coming hard and fast as he sucks and mouths and licks her pussy. Despite that, despite the shock and the unbelievable pleasure, she tries to focus as she comes down. She can barely think at this point, but she can’t get the look on his face out of her head, and though he apparently plans, as always, to see her through her orgasm, single-minded in his resolution to make it last, she fights off the lingering echoes of pleasure that pulse through her, struggling to sit up, to take control once again.

Looking down at him through her post-orgasmic haze, she watches as, even without looking at her, he continues his ministrations, his kisses growing heated on her skin even as she comes down. Though he’s still not looking her in the eye, he’s pressing his mouth to her pubic bone and the soft hair that covers her, seemingly aiming for her breasts, as far as she can tell, the next stop, she imagines, in his objective of caressing every inch of her skin from her toes to her scalp with his tongue. His hand trails behind, settling between her thighs, aiming to slip back into the warm and the wet, and she knows immediately what his plan is.

This time, though, she’s not as weak.

‘Ben,’ she says again, more firmly if more breathlessly, and her hand, though gentle, is firm on his chest, still covered in the dress shirt, a shirt which is still firmly buttoned.

He’s still completely dressed, she realizes now, looking at him, the dress shirt still firmly buttoned to the final button, the dress shoes still on, his dress pants, the same ones he’d worn to the office that fateful day, still somehow perfectly pressed and perfectly creased and still completely done up. Still in place even with the large bulge where his erection presses against the zipper. 

And he’s still not looking at her, he’s still avoiding her eyes, even as she holds him in place with the gentlest of hands and prevents him from returning on his objective of getting his lips back where he apparently wants them, which is seemingly on any aspect of her skin he can reach.

‘We have to talk about what we’re doing-’

She may have stopped him from his desire to kiss every inch of her skin, but he’s still focused, his hands still free and still busy. He’s trying to distract her, she can tell, with his steadfast focus on her pleasure, distract her from what she wants to do, which is to make him tell her about the feelings are so obviously spilling out from his heart and out through his eyes. Make him tell her why she feels like there’s so much he’s still not telling her.

He’s still ignoring her, still intent on his goal and she sees now, what it will take.

‘Ben. Stop.’

It would be almost comical, how he freezes in place if it weren’t for how his eyes beseech her to let him do what he needs to do, to let him focus on his overwhelming goal, his _need_ to please her, his _need_ to prove his repentance, for all that he’d done, all he’d failed to do, all he thought he’d done and all he felt responsible for.

For everything he was responsible for and for everything he wasn’t.

‘Please,’ he begs now, still kneeling at her feet, his voice soft and dark in the quiet dark.

And it’s shocking, how she’d forgotten what his voice sounds like, it had been so long since she’d heard it, though realistically it hasn’t been, it’s so quiet in this dark room, so quiet, and his voice now is deep and soft and low, and the way it sounds, the desperation it betrays, breaks her, more than a little.

‘Rey. Please.’

He’s almost begging, now, and while it might seem appealing, in theory, to have a man that powerful and that large and that remarkable and that brilliant, beg for her forbearance, and though it might be under different circumstances, she breaks at the pain and regret that lies beneath his voice, breaks as she hears what underlays it, and she feels only the urge to cry. For everything they’d had. For everything they might have been. For every ounce of pain that spills from his heart. As it makes her feel as though she needs to beg in return.

_Let it go._

_Let it all go._

_The past. The pain. The regret._

_Let it all go._

But he’s not listening to her unspoken pleas, so intent, so resolute in his determination to destroy her with devotion to compensate for all that she’d endured, those few days.

‘Please. Rey. One more night. One more. Give me one more night. Let me give you this. Just let me have this.’

And she doesn’t hear it, and she’s not even sure why she thinks it’s there, that whisper she hears floating on the evening breeze.

_One last time. Need you. Just for now. Just for tonight._

Like this would be the last time, for them. Like he was sure that this would be the last time she gifted him with her body. Like he was convinced that this would the last time she’d let him near, let him feel her warm, bless him with her presence. With her touch. With her joy and her laugh. Like he was sure that she was already gone, already halfway out the door, leaving him to face the world alone.

‘Please.’

_Let me have this. Before you walk away._

She’s no idea why she hears this, imagines this, these pleas, simply from the way he looks at her, the way he begs for the right to touch her, to make her feel the way she deserves to feel, the way he seems desperately to want her to feel, around him tonight.

She’s no idea why she reads this as the subtext in his gaze that burns through her, why she knows, somehow, that the reason he wouldn't meet her eyes earlier tonight was that he knows that if he did, he wouldn't have been able to resist the urge to beg. Wouldn't have been able to resist begging the way he's doing now.

She doesn't know why she can read this, in his eyes.

She just knows it’s true.

‘Just this. Just tonight, you'll never have to- Please. I’ll do anything. Just let me take care of you tonight. Please.’

And she knew, in that moment, what he was thinking, where he was going with this. And she knows exactly what she needs to do.

Knows how she has to show him.

That she has already moved past it, the complications of their meeting, that they could move past it, too. That, whatever, Snoke had done, whatever had brought them here, they would be the ones to decide how to move forward. They would be the ones to decide their destiny. That Snoke may have been responsible for the past, for the way in which they had met, but that they were responsible for the future.

That they’d make him burn, Snoke, soon enough.

But in the meantime, they’d work together to make each other whole.

Showing him would be difficult, it was true, but she knew she could do it, just as she knew they’d find their way. Ignoring the way her body, still mostly naked, breaks out in goosebumps in the chill of the room, she stands, looking down at Ben from an even higher height from this position, as he continues to kneel at her feet, still so large that his head reached to the level of her sternum. Stands, looming above him, even as he keeps his eyes on hers, imploring her to let him worship her, even as he seems to crumple, fearing her rejection.

Reaching down, one more time, to cup his face, she kisses him softly even as she cupped the soft skin of his sharp chin and smiles into his eyes, indicating with the gentle pressure of her hand at his jaw that he should stand. Ignoring the desperation in his eyes, ignoring the pleas for mercy she could all but hear as they continue to spill from his eyes without pause – _please_ , _Rey, please_ – even as she refuses to let them spill from his lips, she steps sideways, away from where she’d been sitting on the bed, smiling. She moves instead to stand behind his current position, intrigued by the way he follows her as a sunflower follows the sun, as he almost spins to follow her, until he is standing in her position, in front of the bed with it behind him and her in his position, looking up at her tall lover. He never takes his eyes off hers, now, the desperation she could see bleeding off of him staining the hope that ekes out of him, and she smiles in reassurance.

She wasn’t going anywhere.

She was, however, going to take charge. It might be the only way to stop the heartbreaking inner monologue she could almost see thumping away behind his eyes and bleeding into his brain. As it makes him bite his lower lip nervously as he tries desperately to keep it in.

‘Ben. Sit,’ she tells him now, crowding him until he had nowhere to retreat to and he almost falls, graceless and awkward, onto the bed, sitting awkwardly on the cheap, ugly coverlet as he continues to stare at her out of the fathomless depths of those dark eyes. Moving to squat in front of him, purposely copying his previous position, she ignores the way he winces almost imperceptibly as she positions herself at his feet. It clearly displeases him, having her appear, even for a moment, to be in the subordinate position.

‘Here’s how it’s going to go,’ she tells him softly, never allowing him to break the way she captures his gaze with hers.

He nods eagerly, seeming relieved, convinced, apparently, that she’d given in to his earlier, desperate pleas to let him worship her. And she smiles, a sharp, feral, predatory grin.

‘I’ve got you exactly where I want you.’

_‘Yes.’_

‘And you’ll let me take whatever I want.’

She’s never seen a response so eager.

‘Yes. Please. Rey. Please, whatever you want, I'll make you feel so good-’

‘Hush,’ and she smiles again at how quick he does so, pleased at how he was letting her take control. ‘Here’s the thing. We need, I think, to shut that big brain of yours off.’

_And I know just how to do it._

He is confused, she could see it as he looks at her, as to where she was going with this, this game, confused by the fact that she doesn't seem to be letting him do what he needs to do - which is get her off in every way his big, gorgeous, powerful brain can imagine, but, unlike him, she sees the worry in his eyes and she sees what she needs to do. She commits to taking it all the way, commits to breaking that brilliant brain. She’s not playing around. It was true, they did need to shut those thoughts that are rattling around that massive cranium of his off, get it to stop calling him names, get it to stop distracting him with worry and regrets, get it to focus on the potential of the future rather than the mistakes of the past.

‘It’s a pretty brain, Benjamin, a big, gorgeous, powerful brain, and I do love it, but we’re gonna turn it off, now.’

She was sure he was beyond listening to her, at this point, was simply desperate to please her now that he’d gotten her to agree to let him stay, at least for what he clearly thinks is one last night.

_Little did he know._

She’d won her prize, he was hers. She wasn’t going anywhere.

But let him worry about that tomorrow. For now, the key was to get him, and his massive brain, out of his own way.

Moving to slide her underwear back on – _just for the moment, Ben, relax, just so you can focus_ – she spreads her legs wide as she climbs onto the bed with him between her spread legs, moving into his lap and then climbing forward, forcing him to lay back all the way, propped up on the meager pillows, as she straddles him. Feeling the warmth start to move through her once more, she moves to shuck the hoodie up and off over her head, taking the tank top she’d worn along with it, as she hovers over him in nothing but a thin thong.

If anything, she sees his eyes darken further, looking at her breasts, and his hands, seemingly moving of his own accord, reach up to cup them, and she knows, as surely as anything, that if she lets him reach his goal his hands would be as gentle as before until she tells him to do otherwise. Knows he is focusing unerringly on his unerring objective of driving her out of her mind with pleasure.

‘Un-unh,’ she said, quietly but firmly, and his hands freeze in the air, mid-way to their objective, his eyes almost panicked as they seek out the reason for her putting the brakes on, searching for any clue as to what she wants him to do.

‘We are going to do this my way, remember? And my way says: you don’t touch. At all. Until I say so. My way says you can grab hold of the sheets or the pillow or the wall, hell, you can grab hold of your gorgeous hair, but you don’t touch _me_ until I say. You don’t touch _yourself_. You don’t reach for my pretty tits or my ass or my cunt. You don’t reach for anything. You pretend I’ve tied your big, massive, beautiful hands to that headboard-’

\- she would too if she had anything to tie them with, but she didn’t, so this would have to do - 

‘- and you keep them there until I say so. Got it?’

His powerful voice below her was barely a rasp.

‘Got it.’

‘Remember. My way. And my way says I do what I like, with you. With your body and your mouth and your cock. Your brain we're going to turn off. And you lie there, while you concentrate on the way it makes you feel. My voice. My body. My hands. My lips. My cunt, wrapping around you. Me telling you what I’m going to do to you, what I’d like to do to you, what I am doing to you. Me telling you everything I like. Me, telling everything you'll get to do to make me feel good. Got it?’

‘Yes. Please. Yes.’

It’s as if he'd screamed it in this small, quiet room.

_Oh, God, yes_.

‘Good. You can tell me what you like, what you want, what you need. You can let your body tell me how it feels when I do what I like, and you can tell me what your body likes when I do what I like. You can use any words you like, you can tell me anything you like. Never stop talking, if that’s what you want.

But you touch - me, yourself, we stop. I stop.

Got it?’

‘Got it.’

‘You’re sure? You don’t need me to go over the rules again?’

‘I got it.’

His voice, that deep, delicious, deadly voice is rough with effort and reaction and, sure he understands what she plans if not what she intends, she pats him gently on the chest as she leans in for a kiss, driving her tongue deep into his mouth, enjoying the interplay of their mouths the way she always has.

‘Good boy.’

She leaves it at that, for the moment, letting him kiss her, letting her kiss him, enjoying the sensation of them meeting again, the way it was meant to be. If it hadn’t been for Snoke - no, she can’t think that way. Maybe it was fate, that they met then, though it was to imagine them not meeting eventually, given her friendship and professional relationship with his parents. Maybe they would have ended up here, eventually, anyway. She likes that, likes to imagine how that would have happened.

In the meantime, he’s here with her now, completely at her mercy, and she glories in it. When she moves down to suck at the pulse point under his soft jaw as she works the first button on his shirt loose, his hands clench, where they rest on the sheet, and she knows she has him. She takes her time, then, with those stupid, frustrating buttons, resists the urge to rip the shirt to shreds to get to what she wants, that big, wide, delightfully broad chest of his, as she reminds herself that she can be patient, too.

She has a plan - she means to wreck him - and she has all night.

It’s not a surprise, to find the undershirt underneath his shirt, it’s the middle of winter, after all, though she wonders how she hasn’t noticed the outline of it before now. Spreading the dress shirt all the open so that it’s out of the way, she traces his stomach over his undershirt, glorying in the way his stomach clenches under the soft cotton and her softer touch.

‘Too many clothes, Ben,’ she tsks, even as she leans down to pull the undershirt up so she can take her time tracing his abs with her lips, stopping every now and again to nibble.

The room is dark - the gentle light of the bedside lamp giving off only a gentle glow - and quiet, the only sound that of his strained breathing and the brush of her skin against his skin. She almost wishes she’d set her phone to play some non-intrusive music at low volume, but it’s nice, to hear how he strains beneath her. How his moans echo softly through the room. She imagines it will be even better, once she has him begging for her to finish him the way she likes.

‘Use your words, baby,’ she reminds him, even as she pushes the shirt all the way up so she can trace the edge of his large, flat nipple with the edge of her fingernail.

The only response is a low whimper, and she smiles against his skin. Still straddling him, still naked other than her underwear, she shifts slightly, purposely brushing against his erection a few times to remind him of her position. She has him half-propped up against the pillows, so it’s easy enough, to tap him lightly so that he knows to shift enough so that she can get the shirt and the undershirt off of him, tossing them over onto the lone chair in the room, freeing his massive chest for her to explore.

She spends the next few minutes doing exactly that, exploring every inch of each nipple, tracing every muscle of his chest with her fingertip as they flex under her touch, as he strains with the effort of not moving. As she uses her mouth and her hands and her tongue to map out every part of his upper party, as she takes time out to worship some of the beauty marks scattered across his pale skin, as she breaks her rhythm to spend some time with her tongue in his mouth and her cunt rubbing against his lower abdomen. With his nipples in her mouth as he clenches underneath her.

She loses time like this, until she can’t remember how long it’s been, just that this is hers, this massive upper body, this massive man, to play with, as her blood heats and the warmth moves through her body and she’s panting in a rhythm that an equal counterpoint to his.

He’s good though, her good boy, follows the rules, though she can see the effect she’s having on him as she moves up to brush her nipples against his lips, as she whispers a filthy litany of all the things she’s planning in his ear. Tells him everything she dreams of, late at night, as she touches herself and plans ways of tormenting him. As she thinks of sucking him off until he begs, of fucking his face with her pussy with his nose at her clit. As she contemplates using every last inch of him as her own, perfect, oversized, personal sex toy.

The heavy breathing picks up, on his end, and by this time his hands are buried in the sheets, clenching so hard she wonders he hasn’t ripped them to shreds, but he’s still not anywhere near where she wants, _needs_ , him to be. She means to wreck him, after all, break him down and claim him for her own, and he’s still too much in control, still nowhere near losing it as yet. His brain still too much in use, no matter how much his arms flex, no matter how he chews at the inside of his lip, his jaw moving as he struggles to focus on doing what she’d commanded – staying still. He’s still too quiet, despite all her provocation, still too determined not to whisper into her ear all the dirty, wicking things he wants her to do with his glorious body and broken soul. Wants her to do with him. His body is willing, sure enough, but his will is still too strong, too determined, too careful not to come apart in her gentle hands, too scared to beg her to take control of his needs.

No matter, she reminds herself. She’s plenty of time.

And after all, they’ve only just begun.

Sliding down the length of him, she finds the belt buckle right where it should be, right where she remembers leaving it the last time they’d met up in a random hotel room, where she’d done it up all nice and right before unzipping him and taking him into her mouth. Before she’d had him spill down her throat and then had sent him out the door warm, wet and satisfied on his way to start the day.

It’s the work of a moment, to have it undone and the zipper down, tapping his hip lightly in a signal that he should shift, lift up his hips and butt so she could slide down everything the length of his legs in the way he’d often done for her in the past. Done for her so recently. She slides off the thin socks as she goes, admiring the breadth of his elegant feet as she does, and while she sees the appeal of mirroring what he’d done to her, the appeal of torturing him by licking her way the length of his long, long, long legs, the truth is, it’s too tempting, his cock, standing straight and proud as it looks her in the face, weeping a little at the engorged tip, and she’s missed this.

Besides.

She means to wreck him, after all.

Looking him in the face, ensuring he’s paying attention, she rises in one fluid motion before moving to take the entirety of him, or at least as much as she fit, in her warm, wet mouth, enjoying the sensation of suckling around him as he comes half off the bed in reaction, his head falling back, hands clenched desperately in the bedsheets, the tendons in his neck standing straight out in reaction. Watches as he tries to keep his moans and whimpers inside, bitten back behind his teeth buried in his lower lip.

‘Fuck,’ he groans, again almost in a mirror copy of her own reaction, and she smirks around him, using her tongue to lick him as if he were a lollipop, her mouth continuing to suckle the entire time, using the suction of it to enhance the feeling.

It’s broken the seal of his control, that moment, and as she resumes her exploration of his body, as she reclaims her throne of his lap with his nipple in her mouth as she needs it, the words spill from him, a dirty, groaning litany of all the things he’s imagined in that time they’d been apart interspersed with every swear word she could imagine. The words _fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck_ above all tumble increasingly from his perfect pouty lips as she can hear him struggling to breathe.

'Yes, baby, that’s right, let it all out,’ she croons at him, even as she feels the feeling building up in her again and the way her panties, already damp, grow increasingly wet as she grinds down in reaction to his words and the way he’s increasingly bowing to her will, turning himself over to her mercy.

Friction helps ease the ache between her thighs a bit, and she’s not ready yet, to make him come, so she amuses herself by rubbing herself against his thick thigh to relieve some of the tension she feels building. Takes her time; dragging her pussy against the edge of his hip, burying her breasts into his chest, living for the pressure on her nipples as they pucker against his skin. Looking up, though, she watches as his eyes watch her, and she sees how his lips, without something to occupy them, press and bite into themselves, and she decides he deserves a little treat.

Moving up his body again, she again puts her nipple and then her entire breast into his waiting, open mouth, enjoying the way it fits so neatly, his plush lips suckling even as his tongue, seemingly desperate, flicks at her in the way he knows she likes.

‘That’s right, suckle, pretty boy,’ she tells him, and the feeling as he does would bring her to her knees if she wasn’t there already, the heady pleasure rushing through her as she throws her head back even as she pants her way through it.

Her other breast feels cold suddenly, so she switches them, forcing the other one into his mouth, the pleasure overwhelming as he whines in desperation to lavish each one with care. Even as she does, she manages to watch out of the corner of her eye as one of his massive hands raises seemingly of its own volution, before hovering at the height of her body and, trembling, sets itself back down to clench at the sheets.

_Oh, yes._

_Yes._

_Yes._

_Yes._

The power she feels flowing through her, as the man beneath, constrained by nothing but the sheer force of will at her demand, obeys her instructions to hold his massive body still in the way she’d instructed, is _intoxicating_.

She imagines it will be even more so when she puts him back together after she breaks him.

‘Such, a good boy,’ she tells him as she reclaims her breasts and moves slightly to sit back, watching him as they pant in together as she rubs circles on his abs with her body for relief, the sodden underwear that covers her aching cunt smearing across his abs, the edge of her ass brushing against his erect dick.

She’s edging herself, as much as she’s edging him, but she’s in control here, and she doesn’t have to wait. Besides, it might be fun, to have him watch, as she uses him to make herself come.

She means to wreck him, after all.

Keeping his eyes locked with her, she shifts, to rub herself a few times against his deliciously hard dick before shifting to lay herself across his front again, taking advantage of their position to nibble on those plush lips again as she maneuvers her body, staying in place on top of him while she slips her thong all the way off, tossing it over the edge of the bed as he watches and she hears the shift in his breathing as he breathes in the reality that she's now as naked as he is.

His eyes are nearly black now, even this close up, and she sees as his hindbrain takes over as she lays across him, naked, her body subsumed in his. Taking a moment to catch her breath, she amuses herself by rubbing her newly naked ass on his cock, loving the way it twitches against her. Loving the way the very weight of it divides her as she shimmies down slightly to press it against her exactly where she needs it. Her slick is making a mess of him, she’s sure, and she loves it, rubbing against him to increase the tension and the friction, taking the time to enjoy making herself hotter and wetter even as he pants underneath her. Shifting, she plants her elbows gently to form a stand for her face as she watches him watch her, never ceasing in her rubbing against him, hitting his dick against her clit again and again. She’s so worked up, she knows she’s going to come easily, this way, so it’s not a surprise when she does, the gentle waves of her orgasm coursing through as she buries her face in his chest and pants.

Please,’ he whimpers, and she forces her head to look at him, where his eyes are wild. ‘Please, don’t hide - your face – need to see.’

‘You want to watch me come, my pet?’

She’s gone this far, and she’s not even sure what game she’s playing, at this point, but she likes it, and, based on the rock-hard erection pressing into her, he desperate to keep going.

‘Please,’ he groans. ‘Need to watch – see your face – watch when you come.’

‘Hmm,’ she purrs at him, pleased. ‘That’s right, you tell me what you need and you can have it.’

She’s so sensitive at this point, still so worked up, that it’s the work of a moment, to press against herself with her fingers, feeling herself up the exact way she does when she wants to get herself off the fastest when it’s late and she’s tired and she just wants to relax her body before she sleeps.

Before she even realizes it, she’s grinding against him again, making sure to look him in the face, let him see every shift in her facial expression, watching in return as he licks his lips and groans slightly as she moves against him and her fingers, watching as she arches into him, biting her lip as the pressure and the heat build until she’s coming again, panting even as she keeps her face open to him, doing her best to watch as his eyes burn and his lip trembles as he watches her come apart at her own hands as she perches on top of him.

The room is spinning a little, at this point, so she takes a moment, collapsing on him, breathing heavily, legs trembling slightly as he lays still and penitent under her and she struggles to regain her focus. 

‘Fuck,’ she says again, pushing her hair from where it’s fallen into her face, getting in her way, as she absently wishes for a hair tie. Sated for the moment, she moves to snuggle into him, almost purring like a kitten as she licks him and gives him all the little kisses she’d stored up.

_Fucking wreck him_ , her brain screams the entire time.

He’s trembling under her as well, though she’s not sure if it’s from reaction or from the strain of holding himself so still under her. He’s still as rock hard, just as he’s been since they started this, and if it weren’t for that fact, she’d be tempted to take a little nap to recover, here snuggled on her favourite new body pillow. She’s not that mean, though, and, more to the point, she’s just as needy as he is, and yes, at this moment, she’s more satisfied than she’s been in weeks, but she wants to feel him, _needs_ to feel him, shatter underneath her with his cock buried so far inside her cunt that it’s impossible to tell where she ends and he begins. She knows what he’s capable of, with that magical dick of his, and, more than that, she wants to wreck him.

Badly.

She might have to hydrate first, though, so, treating him with all the consequence she might her trusty vibrator, she dismounts from his body with more haste than grace to walk over to grab the plastic courtesy cups provided with the room and still wrapped in plastic. Wanders over to the bathroom to fill them both up with tepid tap water. She’s still completely nude, obviously, and she feels the way he can’t take his eyes off her body as she walks back to him, still in the position she’d left him, still not having moved an inch, with his cock still erect and hard as a rock, wanting her.

Standing next to the bed, she gulps down the water, paying no attention to the way it spills all over her as it goes down, spilling out the sides of her mouth and down her neck, tracing over her breasts and down the valley between them. Finishing, she puts the cup down before picking up the second, taking a small sip as if to test it before raising it his lips, watching as he drinks it down the same way, water spilling down his neck and chest.

‘Mmm,’ she murmurs, as she bends down from where she’s standing and uses her tongue to capture each drop of the precious substance, swirling it on her tongue as his breath catches and she again hears him whimper.

Going simply with what she wants, following her own desires with as little consideration for the massive Adonis writhing under her as she would an inanimate object, she follows the water’s trail down the length of his stomach, past his abs and over his stomach until she reaches her destination, inhaling the length of his cock the way she’d inhaled the water, clambering back on to him without taking her mouth off of him, feeling him shift as he tries desperately from jerking his hips to get further into her wet mouth. Peeling off of him with a pop of her lips, she looks up.

‘Words, baby.’

‘Gonna come so hard, baby. Going to come in your mouth, spill all over your pretty tits, fuck, fuck, fuck-’

‘Then come,’ she tells him with a shrug as she returns to her work and, sure enough, moments later he’s swearing as he spills into her, even as she swallows it all up and he flops back onto the bed in an exhaustion she's sure it more emotional than physical.

She smiles, just a predatory little smile, and heads back to the bathroom with the empty cups for a refill before returning it to him, full, for him to gulp down.

‘Drink up, sweetness, we’ve only just begun.’

By the time she works him to completion with her mouth the second time, he’s begging, for her to take him, to let him come in her, to let him fuck her - in broken whispers and harsh, broken tones. He makes promises then, broken overwrought ones, of what he’d do with her, to her, how he’d make her every dream come through if she’d let him touch her, if she’d let him free - _baby, baby please, make you feel so good, fill you up, make you scream, please, please, please, Rey, let me touch you, let me in_ \- though he is still constrained only by his own will and the gentle weight of her mouth on his cock. She keeps the remainder of her body separate from his own then, ensuring that not even her hands held him down, making it clear that it’s his decision to comply with her will. She trusts he’ll do what she’d asked, trusts he’ll do everything to follow the rules she’d set, if only to ensure she doesn’t follow through on her promise to end even her sweet torment should he fail to do so.

By the time she takes him in hand, grasping him by the base of his engorged cock, holding it steady and sure as she straddles him and notches him to her, holding him by the base as she slides down slowly and surely, feeling the stretch as she takes him in, as he fills her, he’s babbling. The harsh words that fall from his lips make up a raw combination of pleas and whimpers and broken curses and half enunciated ‘thank you’s until she leans over him, draping herself over him to kiss him softly while keeping her lower body still to maintain him carefully in place. She holds herself there, for a moment, before she starts to move against him, bracing herself on the pillows on either side of his face as she rides him, her breasts moving against her chest and her thighs shaking with the effort of lowering herself up and over him over and over and over again while she pants with the exertion and he trembles below her.

By the time she comes, for the umpteenth time, as her release hits her with the impact of a freight train and she shudders, collapsing on top of him, screaming her release into the pillows he’s propped up on, using the soft fabric to muffle her cries, though she’s not sure why. She hears it, in that moment, the way the sheets shred under his nails as he does his utmost not to break under her, even she sobs in relief as the waves of her orgasm have her panting into his chest, her eyes still locked on his.

It’s hard not to notice, how he is still under her, how, even with the sheets shredded around him, he sticks to her rules, laying still beneath her and hard inside her.

‘Ben?’

‘Please.’

By then, it seems the only word he still seems capable of pronouncing, as it falls in a liternay from his lips.

'Please. Please. Please. _Please_.'

She loves him so much in that moment it’s hard to express it. Loves him so much it’s hard to breathe, as her heart swells in her chest and it threatens to strangle her.

She’s only realizing it now, the depths to which she loves him, the extent to which she loves him, the extent to which she’s fallen.

‘Love me. Ben. Just touch me, love me. Anyway, anyhow you like.’ 

It’s not what she expected, the way he moves the moment she gives him permission. She’d expected haste and desperation, expected him to grab and grope and move her into position, expects him to thrust up into her, take the relief he obviously so desperately needs, based on the feral need that shines so clearly out of his eyes, blown dark by desire.

He does none of that. He shifts her gently, his hands on her hips, moving to place her gently to lie her in front of him, still joined as they are, and moves slowly into her, reverently, his eyes, soft as starlight and as wet as the sea, staring into hers intently as he cups her face in his hands, as he greets her with the softest kiss as he finishes in her, coming apart in her arms within moments. He stays wrapped around her as he does so, and never lets her go, holding onto her afterward with dear life, as if she’ll disappear should he loosen his grip even slightly.

And all the while he’s whispering her name, over and over and over again, as if it’s the only word he’s now able to form in the brain she’d so thoroughly wrecked. As if she’d managed to imprint it on his soul.

_Rey._

And it’s everything she knew she, he, _they_ , needed. Knows there is no going back now, even if they wanted to, which she knows, with every fibre of her being, that neither of them ever had. And it’s true, what she’d told him. That it doesn’t matter how they ended up here, it doesn’t matter what role Snoke or his parents or his uncle or the fucking cosmos for that matter, played in getting them here. They found each other, just as a part of her knows they always would have, they found each other and they reached out for each other and they trust each other, to be there, for each other.

And that’s all they really need to know.

_Rey._

It’s warm on her neck, his breath, as they come down from their respective highs, as they lay in the crumpled, ruined, torn sheets in a cheap motel off the edge of the highway that runs along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, far from anywhere and nearer the edge of oblivion than anywhere else. As they lay in each other arms and their breaths synchronize until they are one, breathing together in perfect harmony.

_Rey._

They breathe, together, two damaged, imperfect people in far from perfect circumstances, who are doing their best to make their peace in each other, for at least this one perfect, complete moment.

She hears it then, on the edge of the wind, in the breath of her ear, in a voice so soft she’d struggle to hear it if it weren’t for that fact they are literally wrapped together, literally connected to each other with his cock in her cunt and his mouth on her ear. If they weren’t literally wrapped closer to one another than any two people could ever hope to be. She might not hear it even then, it's so soft as it's whispered in her ear. But she does, hears it as it floats into her brain and wraps around her heart.

‘I love you,’ he says, and it’s a broken whisper, the way he tells her.

It’s a confession, it’s the heart-broken plea of a man drowning, of a man lost, it’s a secret, it’s a wish.

It’s everything of which she’d always dreamt.

She wants to tell him all of that; wants to tell him of all the ways spending this time with him has brought her all the joy she’d least expected, led her to demand things she’d never considered, led her to consider all that she’d been waiting for, all these years.

That with all the waiting she’d done, she’d never thought she might be waiting for _him_ , all these years.

She wants to tell him everything, wants to tell him all of that, wants to bend his ears and his body and his heart and his will in every way that she’d done tonight. Wants to pour her love into him – every tiny bit of love that she’d been holding on to for all these years, every last ounce of love and longing and hope and tenderness that she’d held locked up so securely for all these years.

Wants to give him her heart.

But she tells him none of that, deciding instead to bury herself in his arms and trust in the heart she’d always known was larger than anyone had ever been able to give him credit.

Decides to glory instead in this moment and the love that comes pouring out of the man cuddled in the makeshift bed she’d made, wrapped in his arms.

Snuggles in to whisper in his ear her promises in return. 

‘Fucking, finally.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The homage to Adama/Roslin at the very, very end there - no, you didn't imagine it.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also on Twitter at @RandomBks if you want to come say hi.


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